EVANGELIUM SECUNDUM MARCUM

• 179A

( See his Works. )

VERS. 1.-- The beginning of the Gospel. (ISID.) The Gospel, good tidings, which belongs properly to the kingdom of God and to the remission of sins. Whence: Repent ye and believe the Gospel: and the kingdom of heaven hath drawn nigh. [Vulg. Mc 1:15 has regnum Dei, "the kingdom of God," and sets the two members in the other order, the kingdom's approach before the summons.]

(HIER.) The four Gospels are one, and the one is four. And so the book of Mark also is called the Gospel, and likewise that of the others: because all are one, and one is all.

Of Jesus Christ. (HIER.) Jesus in Hebrew, Soter in Greek, Salvator in Latin, Christus in Greek, Messias in Hebrew, anointed in Latin, that is, king and priest: he is said 179Bto be of the line of David the king, and of the Levitical line.

Of the Son of God. (BEDA.) Matthew says: of the son of David, the son of Abraham (Matth. I). Mark says: of the Son of God, so that little by little from the lesser to the greater, etc., as far as John begins from the eternity of the Word of God, and ends in the resurrection of the Lord.

VERS. 2.-- As it is written. Mark sets the testimonies of the prophets first, by which he asserts that these things are old and not new, but foreknown and foretold by the prophets, and in this he invites also the Jews, who had received the law and the prophets, to the Gospel: and he calls the Gentiles, who held the Gospel, to the veneration of the law and the prophets, that no one, after the heretics, may receive the one without the other.

Behold, I send. (BEDA.) John is called an angel not 179Cby fellowship of nature, as Origen falsely pretends, but by the dignity of his office: as the priests also are, of whom it is said: The lips of the priest keep knowledge, and they seek the law out of his mouth, because he is the angel of the Lord of hosts (Mal. II).

(ID.) Note that this testimony: Behold, I send my angel, etc., is Malachi's, yet he says that both are Isaiah's, because, etc., as far as all the prophets spoke by one spirit as with one mouth.

VERS. 3.-- Of one crying. (ISID.) To the Jews, deaf because of their sins, set far off, worthy of a cry of indignation. In the desert. In the desert the voice and the cry are made: because the house of Judaea is deserted, standing empty and swept, without the Spirit of God, without prophet, king, priest. Whence Jesus and John seek what was lost 179Din the desert. Where the devil conquered, there he is conquered: where man fell, there he rises again.

Prepare ye. (ISID.) Do penance and preach. Whence the Parasceve before the sabbath, etc., as far as that we, being at rest, may possess the desirable land.

The way of the Lord. (HIER.) The way of the Lord by which he enters in unto men is penance, through which God comes down to us, and we ascend to him. Whence the angels are remembered as ascending and descending upon the Son of man.

Make straight the paths. (ISID.) He commands that, going by the royal 180Aroad, we love our neighbours as ourselves, and ourselves, etc., as far as that the mouth be not sundered from the work, nor the work from the mouth.

The paths come after the way, because the moral commandments are expounded after penance, according to Mark or Matthew. The way is prepared by faith and baptism and penance.

The paths are made straight by the austere tokens of raiment, of girdle, of food, of drink, of a most humble voice.

VERS. 4.-- John. (ISID.) The grace of God. He begins from the grace of God, whence there follows: Baptizing, etc. Through baptism sins are forgiven; whence: That which ye have freely received, freely give (Matth. X). And the Apostle: By grace ye are saved (Ephes. II).

Baptizing. (HIER.) He gave the baptism of penance, he preached a baptism unto the remission of sins, 180Byet he did not give it. As by preaching, etc., as far as now the bride is brought in by the friend of the bridegroom, as Rebecca to Isaac, veiled by the servant with a white cloak.

VERS. 5.-- In the Jordan (ID.) Jordan is the descent of another, where sins are loosed. For the ark, etc., as far as the body of Christ profits not those who are not cleansed, but changes them for the worse.

Confessing, etc. (ID.) Confession and beauty are in his sight (Psal. CXV), that is, in the sight of the bridegroom. Whence the bride alights from her camel, when the Church humbles herself to Christ, who is figured by Isaac, at whose birth God made laughter for Sara. As it is said to Mary, who is a princess with God: Blessed art thou among women (Luc. I).

180C(BEDA.) Confessing their sins, they are baptized. For they ought to promise the newness of a better life, who baptism, etc., as far as and so change those who are cleansed and promise the Christian religion into members of the Church.

VERS. 6.-- And John was, etc. (HIER.) The prophet's raiment and food and drink signify the whole austere life of preachers, and the Gentiles, etc., as far as because all things are from the grace of the Gospel, in which there is no distinction of Jew and Greek.

(BEDA.) Clothed with camel's hair. Because he did not cherish sins, but rebuked them sharply, saying: Ye brood of vipers, etc. The leathern girdle, etc., as far as for in the honey is sweetness, in the locust a nimble flight, but one soon falling.

VERS. 7.-- Mightier than I. (HIER.) Who is mightier than 180Dthe grace by which sins are washed away? He who, etc., as far as and it reaches even to the hundred and forty-four thousand.

To loose the latchet. (BEDA.) There was a custom among the ancients, that if any man were unwilling to take to wife her who fell to him, he, etc., as far as I am not able to bare the feet of the Redeemer, because I claim not for myself the name of bridegroom.

(HIER.) The latchet of the shoes, that is, the mystery of the Incarnation of God. For the heel, etc., as far as the bride among the patriarchs, the friend among the prophets, the neighbour 181Ain Mary and Joseph, the beloved in John the Baptist, the dove in Christ and the apostles.

VERS. 8.-- I have baptized you with water. (BEDA.) John does not yet say openly that he is God or the Son of God, because his hearers were untaught: but little by little, through the humanity glorified, he leads them to faith in the divinity, saying: But he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost. Yet afterwards, when he saw them now more capable, he preaches the Son of God openly, saying: He gave testimony, that this is the Son of God (Joan. III).

(ISID.) I baptize you with water, he, etc. The river of God is always full, always equal, of which: The stream of the river maketh the city of God joyful (Psal. XLV). There is a great distance, etc., as far as the anointing of Christ comes from the bitterness of the passion to the glory of the resurrection; 181Bwhence the Apostle: Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, etc., even to: For which cause God also hath exalted him (Phil. II).

VERS. 9.-- And he was baptized in the Jordan. For three causes: that he might fulfil justice and humility; that he might approve the baptism of John; that, sanctifying the waters of Jordan by the descent of the dove, he might show the Holy Ghost to be present in baptism.

(HIER.) Mark: As the hart, longing for the fountains of waters, gives leaps, crops the tops of the meadows, bears palms upon his crown, so, like the honey-flowing bee, he tastes but lightly the flowers of the field (to which the odour of the true Isaac is likened). Whence Jesus coming from Nazareth of Galilee to the baptism, etc., as far as: To him that overcometh I will give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of my God (Apoc. II).

181CVERS. 10.-- He saw the heavens opened, etc. (BEDA.) The mystery of the Trinity is shown in the baptism: the Son is baptized, the Spirit is in the dove, the Father sounds in the voice. The heavens are opened, etc., as far as the Spirit shall abide with us and shall be in us according to the measure of faith. But of Christ it is said: Full of grace and truth (Joan. I).

Remaining in him. The Spirit remains in him, not from the time he was baptized, but from the time he was conceived. But that he descended at the baptism signifies that spiritual grace is given to us in baptism, to whom, being regenerated of water and the Spirit unto the remission of sins, a fuller grace of the Spirit is wont to be given from heaven by the imposition of the bishop's hand.

VERS. 11.-- Thou art my beloved Son. (BEDA.) 181DHe is not taught what he knew not, but it is shown to us what we ought to believe, namely that he, etc., as far as and rightly did the Spirit descend in the likeness of a dove, which is a simple creature and without gall: because he seeks the simple, nor does he dwell in impure minds.

VERS. 12.-- The Spirit. (ID.) Lest it be doubtful which spirit, Luke deliberately sets before it: Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost returned from the Jordan; then he added: and was led by the Spirit into the desert, lest an unclean spirit be thought to have had any power against him.

VERS. 13.-- Forty days. (ID.) It signifies the whole time in which the devil tempts his members. For the fourfold world, by the observance of the ten commandments, serves the Lord in striving against the devil. 182AAnd four times ten make forty. Everywhere and always the adversary is at hand, who ceases not to hinder our journey.

And he was with the beasts. We also, if in the desert of holy conversation we bear with undefiled mind the bestial manners of men, deserve the mystery of the angels, by whom, loosed from the body, we may be carried over into heaven

VERS. 14.-- But after that. (ISID.) We have received grace for grace, things carnal are beheaded, things spiritual are quickened. The shadow ceasing, the truth is at hand. John in prison, the law in Judaea, Jesus in Galilee, salvation among the Gentiles.

Preaching, etc. (HIER.) Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they shall possess (Matth. V), etc. [Vulg. Mt 5:3 reads quoniam ipsorum est regnum caelorum, "for theirs is the kingdom of heaven"; ipsi possidebunt belongs to the next beatitude, Mt 5:4, "Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the land."] To the earthly kingdom 182Bsucceeds poverty, and to the poverty of Christians an everlasting kingdom; whence: My kingdom is not of this world (Joan. XVIII): for every earthly honour is froth, smoke, a dream.

VERS. 15.-- Repent ye. (HIER.) The sweetness of the fruit makes up for the bitterness of the root: the hope of the harbour delights away the perils of the sea, the hope of health softens the pain of the medicine. He who desires the kernel, let him break the nut: let him do penance who wishes to cleave to the eternal good. They can tell forth the praises of Christ who have deserved to come to the palm of pardon. Whence after penance preachers are chosen.

VERS. 16.-- He saw Simon. (HIER.) Simon, obedient; Andrew, manly; James, supplanter; John, grace. By these names, etc., as far as by prudence 182Cwe obey, by justice we act manfully, by temperance we tread upon serpents, by fortitude we merit the grace of God.

(ID.) Whom does worldly eloquence not intoxicate? With difficulty do men that are powerful, and noble, and rich, and with much more difficulty than these the eloquent, believe God. Their mind is blinded by riches and wealth and luxury, and, encompassed about with vices, they cannot see the virtues, and they judge the simplicity of Holy Scripture not from the majesty of its meanings, but from the serviceableness of its words.

(ID.) Four fishermen are called, Simon, Andrew, James and John: leaving all things they follow. By this chariot we are borne to the upper air, etc., as far as we are covered with the skins of Solomon, in which the bride 182Dglories that she is beautiful.

(BEDA.) It is asked how he called first Peter and Andrew, and after a little James and John, as he relates, etc., as far as for then they followed him, not with the ships drawn up to land as though with a care of returning, but as one calling and commanding.

And they enter in. (HIER.) Mark, disposing the sayings of the Gospel within himself, not following the order of the history, keeps the order of the mysteries, whence on the sabbath he relates the first miracle, saying: And they enter in, etc.

Capharnaum. (ID.) Capharnaum is the village of consolation, the sabbath is rest. The man in an unclean spirit, 183Athe human race, in which is uncleanness, etc., as far as Pharao, let go by Israel, we pursue him, the devil, despised, rises up into scandals.

(BEDA.) That he heals and teaches chiefly on the sabbath shows that he is not under the law, but above it: and he teaches us the true sabbath, that, being zealous namely for the salvation of souls, we may abstain from every servile work, that is, from all unlawful things.

VERS. 22.-- For he was, etc. (BEDA.) The scribes said the things that were written in Moses and the prophets; Jesus, as God and Lord, freely added to the law of Moses himself, or changed, the things that were wanting; whence in Matthew: You have heard that it was said to them of old, etc. But I say to you.

VERS. 24.-- What have we, etc. (ID.) This is not a confession 183Bof the will, but an extortion of necessity: as a runaway servant fears his master when he sees him, and entreats concerning stripes. For the demons, beholding the Lord upon earth, believed that they were straightway to be judged.

VERS. 25.-- Hold thy peace. (ID.) In fitting order the serpent's tongue, which first scattered venom, is first stopped, that it scatter no more, then, etc., as far as that the order of restoration in the Lord may be the same as that of perdition in the first-formed man.

VERS. 26.-- Tearing him. (ID.) Or shaking him, as certain codices have it. But Luke says that it hurt him nothing. Yet what Mark says, tearing, is the same as Luke's: when he had cast him into the midst. But as to what 183Che added, and hurt him not: it is to be understood that that tossing did not weaken him: as demons go out with some limbs cut off or torn away.

(ID.) The man delivered from the demon we understand to be the mind cleansed from unclean thought. But the woman consequently healed of her fevers, the flesh bridled from the fervour of concupiscence by the precepts of continence.

VERS. 27.-- What thing is this? By the things which they see they are stirred up to the search of the things which they had heard. For to this end the Lord himself both works signs and gave to his disciples to work them, that by this the Gospel may be the more surely believed, while they who promise heavenly things to earthly men work heavenly and divine works upon earth.

VERS. 30.-- And forthwith they tell him, etc. Luke says 183Dthat they besought him for her. For sometimes the Saviour heals when he is asked, sometimes of his own accord, that against the passions of vices also he may show both that he is always present to the prayers of the faithful, and that the things which are not understood he either gives to be understood, or, when they are not understood, forgives to them that ask devoutly. Whence: Who can understand sins? from my secret sins cleanse me (Psal. XVIII).

VERS. 31.-- Taking her by the hand. Peter's mother-in-law, sick of a fever, is lifted up when her hand is taken. The fever is intemperance, of which we, the sons of the Synagogue, are healed by the hand of discipline and by the lifting up of desire, and we minister to the will of him who heals us as he declines from us toward evening.

She ministered unto them. (BEDA.) Tropologically: that is, 184Alet the members which had served uncleanness serve justice.

VERS. 32.-- And in the evening. (ID.) The setting of the sun is the death of Christ. They brought unto him all that were ill. For he healed more by the apostles after his death than when, living in the flesh, he preached to the Jews.

VERS. 33.-- At the door. (HIER.) The door of the kingdom, morally, is penance with faith, which works salvation for divers infirmities. For divers are the vices by which the city of the world languishes.

VERS. 34.-- Because they knew him. (BEDA.) Luke says more openly: Demons went out from many, etc., because they knew him to be Christ. The demons therefore know that he is Christ and the Son of God, etc., as far as whence 184BPaul: None of the princes of this world knew. For if they had known, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory (I Cor. II).

VERS. 35.-- And in the morning. (ID.) As by the setting of the sun, death, so by the dawn, the resurrection of Christ, by whose manifest light he went away into the desert of the Gentiles and prayed in the faithful, because he was stirring up their hearts to prayer.

VERS. 38.-- For to this I came. (VICT. ANT.) Fitly does the evangelist subjoin this. For not by this alone is the authority of his divinity shadowed forth, but also the humility of his voluntary emptying. But Luke, that he may express the dispensation of the Word, writes, for to this was I sent. Wherefore he designates by the name of apostleship the Father's good pleasure concerning the incarnation of the Word.

184CVERS. 39.-- And he was preaching in the synagogues. (BEDA.) In this preaching is understood also that sermon delivered on the mount which Matthew relates; for, etc., as far as: And behold a leper came and adored him, saying: Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean (Matth. VIII).

VERS. 40.-- And kneeling down, etc. (BEDA.) Humble, ashamed. For every man ought to blush at the stains of his life, but let shame not check confession: let him show the wound, let him ask the remedy.

(HIER.) The leper, kneeling, entreating the will of the Lord, is made clean by him who willeth not the death of the sinner, but, etc., as far as: Give alms: and behold, all things are clean. (Luc. XI).

184D(BEDA.) The leper signifies the human race, which, according to Luke, is reported to have been full of leprosy. For all, etc., as far as and to offer to the true priest their bodies a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing unto God (Rom. XII).

If thou wilt, thou canst. (ID.) In the will he assigns the power, nor does he doubt of the Lord's will as an unbeliever, but, conscious of his own foulness, he does not presume.

(ID.) He who, shut out by the law, asks to be healed by the Lord's power, judges grace to be above the law. For as in the Lord the authority of power, so in him the constancy of faith.

VERS. 41.-- He stretched forth his hand. (ID.) The law forbids a leper to be touched, but because he is the Lord of the law, he does not 185Aobey the law, but makes the law. He touches him not because he could not heal without a touch, but he thus proves that he was not subject to the law.

I will, be thou made clean. (ID.) That is wonderful, that he heals in the same manner in which he is asked. I will, be thou made clean: and when he had said it, immediately the leprosy departed from him. There is nothing between the work and the command. He spoke, and they were made (Psal. XXXII). Thou seest that the will is the power. And so, etc., as far as: I will for he says on account of Potinus, he commands on account of Arius, he touches on account of the Manichee.

VERS. 44.-- See thou, etc. (ID.) Not because he willed what he could not do, since he hath done all things whatsoever he would (Psal. CXIII). But he teaches that our good deeds are to be kept back, not only from the wage of money, but also from that of favour.

Show thyself, etc. (ID.) That he may understand that he was healed not by the order of the law, 185Bbut by the grace which is above the law. He bids him offer, that he may show that he does not destroy the law, but fulfils it, while, walking according to the law, he heals above the law those whom the remedies of the law were not healing. Nor ought the sacrifice which signified to cease, since that which was signified had not yet been confirmed by the ordinance of the apostles and the faith of believers.

VERS. 45.-- But he going out. (ID.) The salvation of one compels many to the Lord. He cannot keep silence about the benefit, even when bidden by him who gave it. The Lord commanded that it be hidden. For he wills that in the good things we do we should wish to lie hid, which belongs to humility; and that we be brought forward unwilling, that we may profit others, which belongs to great sublimity, since even if we ourselves should wish it, the works cannot be kept silent.

185CSo that now, etc. (HIER.) Jesus was not made manifest to all, who serve broad and public praises and their own pleasures, but to those, etc., as far as whom nothing can separate from the charity of God.

VERS. 2.-- So that there was no room, etc. (BEDA.) While the Lord preached, they are not contained in the house, nor at the door: because, while Christ preached in Judaea, the Gentiles did not yet wish to enter in to hear, yet to them (though set without) he directed the words of his doctrine by his preachers.

VERS. 3.-- The paralytic. (HIER.) The palsy is a type of that torpor in which the slothful man lies in the softness of the flesh, having a desire of health: but by the crowds, etc., as far as 185Dthat by another way he may return with the Magi into his own country.

He was carried by four. (BEDA.) Because by four virtues the confidence of the mind is raised up to the Lord. Of which it is said in the book of Wisdom: She teacheth sobriety and wisdom, and knowledge and strength (Sap. VIII), [Vulg. Sap 8:7 reads sobrietatem enim et prudentiam docet, et justitiam, et virtutem, "for she teacheth sobriety and prudence, and justice, and strength."] which others call prudence, fortitude, temperance and justice.

VERS. 4.-- They uncovered the roof where he was. The roof of the house in which Christ teaches is the sublimity of Scripture, by which a young man correcteth his way, in keeping thy words (Psal. CXVIII).

(BEDA.) The house of Jesus, according to another evangelist, is said to be roofed with tiles, because by the meanness of the letter the spiritual sense 186Ais covered. He is let down with his bed before Jesus, because a man ought to know Jesus even while set in this flesh.

VERS. 5.-- And when he had seen. (ID.) A man's own faith avails much with God, where another's availed so much: so that the man, healed within and without, rose up suddenly, and by the merits of others his own faults were loosed for him.

Son. Wonderful humility, him who was despised by all, loosened in all his limbs, he calls son. Or else for this reason, because his sins are forgiven him.

VERS. 6.-- Thy sins are forgiven thee. He shows that he had been stricken with disease on account of sins, and therefore could not be healed unless these were first forgiven. As to the paralytic at the pool: Behold thou art made whole, sin no more, 186Blest worse befall thee (Joan. V). (BEDA.) For five causes are men afflicted with troubles of the flesh. Either that their merits may be increased, as Job and the martyrs. Or for humility's sake, etc., as far as Lazarus, whose infirmity was not unto death, but for the glory of God, or unto the beginning of eternal damnation, as Herod.

VERS. 7.-- Who can forgive. (ID.) They say true: God alone can do this, and he alone forgives through those to whom he has given the power of forgiving sins, therefore he is truly God. They bear witness to the truth, but they are deceived in denying the person of Christ. They err, therefore, because, though they believe him to be God and to forgive sins, yet they do not believe that he is Christ. But more madly the Arians, who dare not deny that he is Christ and that he forgives sins: they fear not to deny that he is God.

186CVERS. 9.-- Which is easier. (ID.) As if he should say: By the same power by which I behold the secrets of the heart, by that same I forgive sins. As if he should say: From yourselves understand what the paralytic obtains.

VERS. 10.-- The Son of man. (ID.) God alone forgives sins, and the Son of man has power to forgive sins: therefore the same is both God and the Son of man. So Christ the man forgives sins through his divinity, and through his humanity can die for sinners.

VERS. 11.-- Go into thy house. (ID.) He who had been sick carries his bed back home, when the soul, healed by the remission of sins, betakes itself together with the body itself to a long keeping of itself: lest it again admit anything whereby it may be smitten.

186DVERS. 13.-- And he went forth, etc. (ID.) After the healing of the paralytic in Capharnaum he goes forth to the sea, because he instructs not only citizens, but the dwellers of the sea also, and the wave-wandering motions of the world by the firmness of faith, etc., as far as and them that are separated from the waves of covetousness he draws to solitude, by the quiet of that conversation which is in the hope of heavenly things.

VERS. 14.-- Levi. (HIER.) Levi is "added," because from the custom-house of worldly business he follows only the word which he speaks: for he that doth not renounce all that he possesseth cannot be my disciple (Luc. XIV).

(BEDA.) Mark and Luke, for modesty's sake and out of honour for the evangelist, do not set down the name commonly known. He himself (according to that which is written: The just man is first of all 187Athe accuser of himself (Prov. XVIII); names himself Matthew and a publican: that he may show that no convert ought to despair of salvation, since of a publican he was suddenly made an apostle and an evangelist.

He followed him. (ID.) Luke more fully: And leaving all things he followed him (Luc. V). He follows, who leaves all things that he may be able to follow Christ the poor not so much with the step of the body as with the affection of the mind, etc., as far as rightly therefore he who by obeying despised human business was made the steward of divine talents.

VERS. 15.-- And it came to pass. (ID.) Luke: Levi made a great feast for them in his own house (Luc. V). For he who receives Christ within is delighted with an abundance of pleasures, and the Lord gladly enters in, and reclines 187Bin his affection. This is the spiritual banquet of the good poor, which the rich man lacks and the poor man feasts upon.

Publicans. They who exact the public taxes, or those pursuing the gains of the world, who, converted by the example of the publican, now presume upon salvation, and slander not as the Pharisees do, remaining in vices, but repenting.

(BEDA.) He goes to the banquet of sinners: that he may have occasion of teaching, and may impart spiritual food. In going to sinners the humility of the Lord is shown: in the conversion of the penitent the power of his doctrine is made plain.

(ID.) By the calling of Matthew, the faith of the Gentiles: who, having left the gains of the world, feast with the Lord at the banquets of charity and of good works. By the pride of the Pharisees, the envy of the Jews at the salvation of the Gentiles 187Cis signified, to whom it is said: Publicans and harlots shall go before you in the kingdom of God (Matth. XXI).

VERS. 17.-- They have no need. (ID.) If he calls him a physician, who by a wondrous manner of healing was wounded for our iniquities, and by his bruises we are healed (Isa. LIII).

VERS. 18.-- And the disciples were. (ID.) Other evangelists say that the Pharisees and the disciples of John asked this. He seems here to say that others asked it, whom a concern for the same matter had moved. Whence it is gathered that this was objected by many, by the Pharisees, by the disciples of John, by the guests, or by any others whatsoever.

(ID.) The disciples of John and of the Pharisees fast, because they who glory in the works of the law, or (which is worse) follow traditions, etc., as far as he ate 187Dwith sinners, that thou, beholding the grace, mightest acknowledge the power.

VERS. 19.-- Can they. Matthew thus: Can the children of the bridegroom mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them, etc. (Matth. IX.) The bridegroom is Christ, the bride the Church, of which spiritual wedlock the apostles were created, who cannot mourn and fast as long as they see the bridegroom with the bride. When the nuptials shall have passed, and the time of the passion and of the resurrection shall have come, then shall they fast.

(BEDA.) As long as the bridegroom is with us, we are in gladness, and we can neither fast nor mourn; but when for sin he withdraws and flies away, then a fast is to be proclaimed, then mourning is to be multiplied.

188AVERS. 21.-- No man seweth a piece. (ID.) He calls the disciples old garments, that is, still carnal, not yet renewed by firmness of faith, etc., as far as the wine is the fervour of faith, of hope and of charity, by which we are inwardly reformed in the sight of God by newness of understanding.

VERS. 22.-- But new wine. And they were new, when after the ascension they were being renewed by hoping and praying in the desire of his consolation: then they received the Holy Ghost, with whom, as with new must, the new bottles were filled.

VERS. 23.-- When on the sabbath days. (BEDA.) Note first that the apostles do away with the letter of the sabbath against the Ebionites, who, though they receive the other disciples, repudiate Paul as a transgressor of the law.

And to pluck the ears of corn. They hunger as men, having no space 188Bfor eating because of the crowd. But they set forth an example of a more austere life, they seek not prepared feasts, but simple ones.

(BEDA.) The disciples pass through the corn, when prelates look upon their subjects with holy solicitude, and how they may draw each one to the faith, diligently, etc., as far as this the Lord of the sabbath approves, the foolish defenders of the sabbath disapprove, who love only the surface of the letter, know not the refreshment of the mind, are not acquainted with the rest of souls.

VERS. 25.-- Have you never read, etc. Before all others he brings David forward into the midst, who could seem to have opposed the sanctity of the law. And he does this with the design that, through the honour and reverence which they paid to David, he may check the shameless slander 188Cwhich they maliciously aimed at the apostles. As if he should say: Do you not remember that David was bound by the servitude of the law? But I, though I be called the Son of man, am the Lord of the sabbath.

VERS. 26.-- Under Abiathar, etc. Let it not trouble thee that others say Achimelech, for both were then present there. Achimelech the father, and Abrathar the son: who, when his father had been slain by Saul, was made the companion of David's exile, and, in his reign, high priest of greater name than his father: and therefore worthy that the Lord should make mention of him, as of a high priest, even while his father was living.

The loaves of proposition. (BEDA.) As if he should say: If David and Achimelech are not blamed by us, but are excused for 188Dhunger's sake, why do you condemn in these the cause which in the rest you approve? although it be, etc., as far as and all the sons of the Church are priests, joined into a holy priesthood, offering themselves as spiritual sacrifices to God.

And he gave to them. Following this. I will mercy, and not sacrifice (Ose. VI): he judged it better to free men from the peril of famine than to offer sacrifice. The victim well-pleasing to God is the salvation of men.

VERS. 27.-- Man for the sabbath. (BEDA.) The sabbath is so commanded to be kept, that if there be necessity, he is not guilty, etc., as far as if a sick man break the fast, he is not held guilty.

VERS. 28.-- Therefore the Lord. As if he should say: If David the king and the priests (according to another evangelist), 189Aviolating the sabbath because of the ministry of the temple, are free from crime, how much more the Son of man, the true King and Priest! and therefore the Lord of the sabbath is not held guilty of the crime of the ears of corn plucked on the sabbath.

VERS. 1.-- The withered hand. (BEDA.) Which was stretched out to the forbidden fruit, and withered from good work, and was restored by the sap of good works through the hands of Christ stretched out upon the cross.

(HIER.) This man signifies the covetous, who, unwilling to give, wish to receive, to plunder and not to bestow: to whom it is said that they should stretch forth their hands, that is, he who stole, let him now steal no more, but rather let him labour, working 189Bwith his hands the thing which is good, that he may have wherewith to give to him that suffereth need (Ephes. IV).

VERS. 2.-- And they watched him. (BEDA.) Because he had plausibly excused the disciples: they watch himself, that if he heal on the sabbath they may accuse him of transgression: if he heal not, of cruelty or of weakness.

It is lawful to do good on the sabbath days. (ID.) He shows that they violate the precepts of the law by a wicked interpretation, thinking that on the sabbath one must keep holiday from good, whereas the law says, etc., as far as he set before them the likeness of the sheep, and concluded that it is lawful to do good on the sabbath.

A soul. (ID.) By the part he signifies the whole man. Either because he did this for the soul's sake, or because this healing of the hand signifies the salvation of the soul.

To destroy. (ID.) Not that he who is supremely merciful could 189Cdestroy anyone, but for him not to save is to destroy. As he is said to have hardened the heart of Pharao, not that he hardened it, but that he did not soften it when it was hardened.

VERS. 5.-- Stretch forth thy hand. (BEDA.) The unfruitful weakness of the soul is not better healed than by the bestowing of alms; whence: He that hath two coats, let him give to him that hath none: and he that hath meat, let him do in like manner (Luc. III). And in Ecclesiasticus: Son, let not thy hand be stretched out to take, and shut to give (Eccl. IV). For in vain does he spread out his hands to the Lord in prayer, who does not stretch them out to the widow that asks.

And the hand was restored unto him. A great zeal of wickedness, they reckon it for a crime., that at his word the hand was healed. Nor even on the sabbath can he be convicted 189Dof having laboured, who spoke and they were made: whereas they themselves on the sabbath carry food, hand round cups, and the rest that is necessary for living.

VERS. 6.-- And going forth. They who cannot do it by themselves seek companions of iniquity. With the Herodians. The ministers of Herod, because of the enmities which he himself was exercising against the man, pursued with snares and hatreds Jesus, whom John preached.

VERS. 7.-- He retired. He flees as man, because his hour had not yet come, and there was no place for his passion outside Jerusalem.

(BEDA.) From the synagogue he retires to the sea, etc. He leaves Judaea, he comes to the Gentiles with his disciples, that is, when the apostles preached he approached the hearts of the Gentiles: and so 190Ahe received many that came to him, and gave the salvation they had desired.

And a great crowd. (ID.) The teachers of the people and the ministers of the king pursue him with hatred: the unlearned common folk follow him with love, and very many deserve to be healed.

VERS. 9.-- A small ship. The Church gathered out of the Gentiles, having passed over the waves of the world in mind: which, the more it widens the bosom of the heart for the receiving of grace, the more securely it treads upon the waves of the world. Lest they should throng him. They throng him who trouble the peace of the Church. They touch him who receive the faith with a true heart and with love, and they who touched him are reported to have been healed: fleeing those who thronged him, he went up into the little ship.

VERS. 11.-- And the unclean spirits, etc. (BEDA.) Each of the two, both they that had plagues, and the unclean spirits. 190BBut the sick with a holy intention of health: the possessed, or rather the demons in them: compelled by fear not only to fall down, but also to confess his majesty. For, terrified by his presence, they could not hide him whom they now well knew to be the Son of God. Sounder than the Arians, who even to-day deny that he is the Son of God.

VERS. 12.-- That they should not make him known. (ID.) Not only the demons, who confess unwillingly, or those healed by him, who confess of their own accord: but the apostles also, who were to preach in all the world after the passion, are bidden to be silent before the passion, lest, his divine majesty being preached, the passion should be deferred, and so the salvation of the world.

VERS. 13.-- And going up. (ID.) After he had forbidden unclean spirits to preach him, he chose holy men, 190Cwho should preach him and cast out wicked spirits.

This mountain signifies the height of justice, in which they were to be instructed and which they were to preach, by the place he admonishes them to be raised up to heavenly things, and so he gave the law also upon a mountain.

(HIER.) It is the custom of divine Scripture to speak allegorically: but let us so apply high things to our own understandings, that the truth of the history, etc., as far as they are called into the mountain who are lofty both in merit and in word, that the place may accord with their high merits.

VERS. 14.-- That they should be twelve. God loved the beauty of Jacob when the Most High looked upon the nations, and divided the sons of Adam. He appointed the bounds of the peoples according to the number of the children of Israel, that they might be upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. To whom 190Dwas given the power which the Son received from the Father according to the flesh, that they also might do the works which he himself did, and might do greater than these.

(BEDA.) He gave also the power of raising the dead, as Matthew says, that the power shown, faith, etc., as far as because tongues are for a sign not to believers, but to unbelievers (I Cor. XIV).

VERS. 16.-- And he imposed. (ID.) Not then for the first time, but when he said to him who had been brought by Andrew: Thou shalt be called Cephas, which is interpreted Peter (Joan. I). But here the evangelist makes thee attentive, saying that, etc., as far as or hearing the sadness of death, that is, when it is said to him: Another shall gird thee and lead thee whither thou wouldst not (I Cor. IV).

191AVERS. 17.-- And James. Who has supplanted the desires of the flesh. And John, who received by grace what others receive by labour. And he imposed on them the name Boanerges, which is, the sons of thunder. Whose lofty merit deserves to hear upon the mountain the thunder of the Father thundering through the cloud concerning the Son: This is my beloved Son (Matth. XVII), that through the cloud of the flesh they also might scatter upon the earth the fire and the lightnings of Christ into rain. for the Lord made the lightnings into rain, that mercy might quench what judgment burns; whence: I will sing to thee mercy and judgment, O Lord (Psal. C).

James. Who, at the Lord's calling, supplanted the care of the flesh, and, when Herod slew him, despised the flesh itself.

191BJohn. (BEDA.) In whom is grace, or the grace of the Lord, who, for the favour of that special love which he earned by the glory of virginity, reclined upon the breast of his Redeemer at the supper.

Sons. (ID.) Of whom one, thundering, uttered the theological voice (which no man before had known how to bring forth): In the beginning was the Word, etc. (Joan. I.) Which he left so heavy with weight, that if he had wished to thunder somewhat more, not even the world itself could have contained it.

VERS. 18.-- And Andrew. (HIER.) Who manfully does violence to his own perdition, that he may always have in himself the sentence of death, and his soul always in his own hands.

And Philip. (ID.) Who is the mouth of a lamp, who enlightens by his mouth what he has received, to whom is given the work of an enlightened 191Cmouth. This kind of speech Scripture often records, when names are set down for the sake of mysteries: which the evangelist now, earnestly aiming at it in the person of God, inserts.

And Bartholomew. (ID.) Who is the son of him that suspends the waters, of him namely who said: I will command my clouds that they rain not (Isa. V). But the name of a son of God is acquired through peace and love: for Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God (Matth. V). And: Love your enemies that you may be the sons of God (Luc. VI). [Vulg. Lc 6:35 reads filii Altissimi, "the sons of the Most High."]

And Matthew. Who is given: to whom is granted not only the remission of sins, but also to be in the number of the apostles, that the lion and the ox may eat together, and the wolf with the lamb (Isa. XI).

Note, that the other evangelists put Matthew before, 191Dand do not call him a publican. He himself sets himself after Thomas, and calls himself a publican.

And Thomas. (ID.) Who is an abyss. For many know deep things, but do not utter them. Whence I know a man in Christ, etc., even to: which it is not lawful for a man to utter (II Cor. XII).

(BEDA.) Thomas an abyss: because he penetrated the depth of the power in the resurrection. Or a twin, which in Greek is called didymus, that is, doubting, because of his doubting heart, since he scarcely believed the resurrection.

And James the son of Alpheus. That is, of the learned or of the thousandth, of whom at his side a thousand shall fall, and ten thousand at thy right hand (Psal. XC).

(BEDA.) James the son of Alpheus, who is also called the brother of the Lord: 192Abecause Mary of Alpheus was a sister, etc., as far as immediately after the resurrection he is ordained bishop of Jerusalem, as being learned or the son of a learned man.

Thaddeus. The keeper of the heart. Him Luke, in the Gospel and in the Acts of the Apostles, names Jude of James, because he was the brother of James the brother of the Lord. Whence he is called the son of Mary the mother of James and Joseph and Jude and Simon.

(HIER.) And Thaddeus, who is a little heart, that is, a tiller of the heart, who keeps his heart with all watchfulness. For by cleanness of heart God is seen, as through clean glass.

And Simon. (BEDA.) Simon the Cananean, from Cana a village of Galilee, who is also Simon Zelotes, that is, the zealous. Cana is zeal; the Cananean, Zelotes.

192BAnd Simon the Cananean. Who is also Zelotes, Simon laying down or having sorrow. For Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted (Matth. V). He fulfils a threefold mourning who seeks the comfort that is to come. He weeps for his own sins with David and Mary. With Paul he weeps with them that weep. And he weeps much with John, who said: And I wept much: because no man was found worthy to open the book and to loose the seals thereof (Apoc. V). [Vulg. Apc 5:4 closes nec videre eum, "nor to look upon it"; the words about loosing the seals stand at Apc 5:2.] But he is called Zelotes whom the zeal of the house of God eats up, as Phinees: And the slaughter ceased (Num. XXV).

VERS. 19.-- And Judas Scariot. Who does not blot out his sin by penance, nor is it blotted out by remembrance. Whence: And let not the sin of his mother be blotted out. Let it be against the Lord continually (Psal. CVIII).

192CJudas is confessing or glorious; Scarioth, the memory of death. There are many confessors in the Church, proud and boastful, of whom the first is Simon Magus, and other heretics, whose deadly memory is kept in the Church: that it may be blotted out.

(HIER.) Judas Scarioth, from the village in which he was born, or from the tribe of Issachar. Issachar is a wage, namely the price of perdition: Scarioth, etc., as far as whom the example of one humbles unto fear, as the fall of Lucifer humbled the angels, that Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom (Jer. IX), but he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord (I Cor. I).

And they come, etc. (BEDA.) They who have undertaken the care of others ought carefully to guard the gift of conscience, that they may rule first themselves, and thence others.

192DVERS. 20.-- (HIER.) The house in which they come together is the primitive Church. The crowds which hinder the eating of bread are sins and vices, because he that eateth the body of the Lord unworthily, eateth and drinketh judgment to himself, not discerning the body of the Lord (I Cor. XI). [Vulg. 1 Cor 11:29 reads qui enim manducat et bibit indigne, "for he that eateth and drinketh unworthily," with no mention there of the body of the Lord.] Whence the Lord is turned into fury when he says: Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you shall not have life (Joan. VI).

VERS. 21.-- And when they had heard, etc. The crowd throngs him, his own despise him as one mad, in which the salvation of the Gentiles is marked, and the envy of the Jews is reproved, of whom: He came unto his own, and his own received him not (Joan. VI).

193AVERS. 22.-- And the Scribes. (BEDA.) If any through slowness of mind do not understand the word of God, there yet remains a hope of salvation; if perchance they should understand, none. But for those who are unwilling to understand and who pervert what they do understand, there is no hope. Whence, Scribes, that is, the wise, etc. From Jerusalem. Which signifies that he was to be persecuted by his own fellow-citizens even unto death. We read above that a crowd followed him from Galilee and Jerusalem, and from beyond Jordan and about Tyre and Sidon, which are cities of the Gentiles: and the Scribes from Jerusalem were blaspheming: because the crowd of the people of the Jews conducted him with palms and praises; the Gentiles longed for him; the Scribes and the elders of the people were treating of his murder. He hath Beelzebub. Man of flies, or one having flies: by which name they surnamed the prince 193Bof demons, on account of the filth of the blood of the sacrifices.

VERS. 23.-- How can Satan, etc. (BEDA.) Let them choose which they will. If Satan cannot cast out Satan, they say nothing against the Lord. But if he can, let them withdraw from his kingdom, which, being divided, cannot stand.

VERS. 27.-- And then shall he plunder his house. (ID.) He plundered the house, because he distributed all the parts of the world possessed by the devil to the apostles and to their successors, as provinces parted out among them, that they might convert the peoples to the faith.

VERS. 29.-- But he that shall blaspheme. (HIER.) Because he does not deserve to do penance so as to be received, who, understanding Christ, was 193Csaying that he was the prince of demons, etc., as far as: For he that shall do and teach, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven (Matth. V).

(BEDA.) Matthew says (Matth. XII): He that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost or the word, etc. Where he shows that certain things are revealed in the world to come. Which is to be understood of the least matters, as of an idle word, of excessive laughter; for which even this life has earned pardon.

For ever. This against Origen, who promises pardon to all sinners after the judgment, when countless ages have passed.

He shall be guilty of an everlasting sin. (BEDA.) Not because [it is said] that he is not a spirit: or that he is, but is not God: or that he is God, but less than the Father and the Son: because this comes not of diabolical envy, but of human ignorance, etc.

193DVERS. 31.-- Brethren. (HIER.) Not sons of Mary ever Virgin, as Helvidius lies: nor of Joseph by another wife, as others prate, but kinsmen.

(BEDA.) The mother and the brethren, the people of the Jews of whom Christ is according to the flesh, stand outside in the literal sense. The crowd within the house, the Gentiles in the spiritual mystery. The Jews wish to see Christ outside, because, not seeking the spiritual understanding, they rather compel or seek him to come out to teach carnal things.

VERS. 33.-- Who is my mother. (ID.) He does not refuse obedience to a mother, who says: Honour father and mother (Exod. XX): but he shows that he owes more to his Father's mysteries than to a mother's affections, and he showed by example the same thing which he says in word: He that loveth father or 194Amother more than me, is not worthy of me (Matth. X). Nor does he contemn his brethren injuriously, but he sets the spiritual work before kinship, teaching that the bond of hearts is better than the bond of bodies.

VERS. 34.-- Behold my mother, etc. (HIER.) That we may know that we are both his brethren and his mother, if we shall have done the will of his Father, so that we may be co-heirs, because he discerns not by sexes but by deeds. Sister and brother by believing, mother by preaching, while through preaching the love of Christ, as it were Christ himself, is begotten in the heart of the hearer.

VERS. 1.-- And again he began to teach. (BEDA.) Going out from the house where he is said to have a demon, he teaches by the 194Bsea, that he might show that for the guilt of unbelief he would leave Judaea and pass over to the Gentiles. Whence it is fitly set before, that while he was preaching in the house, his mother and his brethren stood outside.

(HIER.) He began to teach by the sea, that the place might indicate hearers bitter and unstable. And therefore, etc., as far as who sweetens bitter things, turns sad things into joy, sickness into health.

Going up into a ship, etc. (BEDA.) The Church, which is in the sea among unbelievers, which God enlightens by the grace of his visitation and consecrates as a dwelling beloved to himself.

And all the crowd was about the sea. (HIER.) These are they who have lately come to hear the word, and thence, by the devotion of their mind, have followed away from the bitterness of the reprobate as from the 194Csea: but they are not yet with the Lord in the ship, because they are not yet steeped in the heavenly mysteries or sacraments which they desire.

VERS. 2.-- Many things in parables. A parable is a comparison made, under some likeness, of things that differ from one another in nature. He speaks after the manner of his own prudence, that they who could not savour heavenly things might have been able to perceive them through an earthly likeness that they had heard. In Greek it is called a likeness when we point out, by certain comparisons, that which we wish to be understood, as we compare iron with some hard man, and a swift man with winds and with birds. The same is done in the thirtyfold, sixtyfold and hundredfold fruit, that is, in the law, in prophecy and in the Gospel, because in the mouth of three witnesses, that is, of Moses, of Elias and of Jesus, the mystery of the kingdom shown on the mountain stands firm.

194DVERS. 4.-- Another fell by the way side, etc. Luke: And it was trodden down, and the birds of the air devoured it (Luc. VIII). The way, the mind, worn by the fear of carnal thoughts: whence the seed perishes and bears no fruit, and is snatched away by the birds, that is, by the demons, who are called birds of the air either because they are of a heavenly and spiritual nature, or because they dwell in the air.

VERS. 15.-- And these, etc. He sets down the differences of those who hear the word. But there are some, as the Gentiles, who do not even hear.

VERS. 19.-- The lusts after other things, etc. Which is a thing commanded. For it is commanded: Thou shalt covet wisdom: keep the commandments (Prov. VII) [Vulg. Prov. VII, 2 reads serva mandata mea, et vives, "keep my commandments, and thou shalt live", with no clause about coveting wisdom; the nearest received wording, Eccli. VI, 37, has the desire of wisdom given, not commanded], etc. And elsewhere: Blessed is the man that feareth the Lord, in his commandments he shall delight 195Aexceedingly (Psal. III). These desires are good: he that desires the other things goes astray.

VERS. 21.-- A candle, etc. (HIER.) The candle, the word of God. The bushel or the bed, the hearing of the disobedient. The candlestick, the apostles, whom the word of God enlightened. The hidden and the secret, which is made open when it is handled by the Lord.

(BEDA.) The bushel, our life measured by the divine foreknowledge. The bed, the flesh, in which, etc., as far as because he sets the lusts of the flesh before it.

Is it not that it may be set upon a candlestick? (ID.) That the preaching of truth may bear rule, and the service of the body lie subject beneath it, through which nevertheless the teaching may appear the loftier, as the candle by the candlestick.

VERS. 22.-- For there is nothing, etc. As if 195Bhe said: Be not ashamed of the Gospel, because there is nothing hidden now which shall not be made open in the judgment, when God shall enlighten the hidden things of darkness, and shall make manifest the counsels of hearts (Matth. X); where there is praise for you from God, but for them everlasting punishment.

VERS. 24.-- With what measure, etc. (HIER.) For according to the measure of faith the understanding of the mysteries is divided to each one, and the gift of knowledge shall be added to us, and virtues also shall be added.

VERS. 25.-- For he that hath, etc. That is, he that has faith shall have virtue, and he that has the work of the word shall have the understanding of the mystery. And on the contrary, he that has not faith fails of virtue; and he that has not the work of the word lacks the understanding of it; and he that does not understand loses the hearing, as though he had not heard.

195CVERS. 26.-- So is the kingdom of God. (HIER.) Divine Scripture shows the heavenly sacraments through earthly likenesses, as is plain throughout the whole body of the Gospels. The kingdom of God is the Church, which, etc., as far as: Since the harvest is at hand, that is, the consummation of the age, in which the just shall rejoice, they that have sown in tears.

VERS. 29.-- He putteth in the sickle. (VICT. ANT.) The harvest indeed is the time of the consummation, the sickle, the word of God, more piercing than any two-edged sword. But the sickle in this place does not denote, etc., as far as for all bear wheat, though not all equally much.

VERS. 31.-- As a grain. (HIER.) This seed he compares again to a grain of mustard, which is least in fear, great in charity, which is greater than 195Dall herbs, because God is charity, and all flesh is grass, and let him that is weak eat herbs. And it makes the branches of mercy and of compassion. Under whose shadow the poor of Christ, who are the living creatures of heaven, delight to dwell.

It shall have been sown. By Christ or by man in the earth, or in the field, that is, in his own heart. This man is our sense and our mind, which, cherishing the grain of preaching with the moisture of faith, makes it sprout in the field of its own breast. It is less, etc. As one preaching things contemptible, and at the first he is not believed, because he preaches God a man, dead, crucified, this, compared with the eloquence and the wisdom of the philosophers, is found less.

196AVERS. 32.-- It groweth up, etc. Which in height, in breadth, in length of years surpasses the nature of herbs: it is high, because it lifts up to heavenly things; broad, because it has taken possession of the whole world; full of years, because it shall not be able to be ended. Than herbs. (BEDA.) The philosophic disciplines, which grow up so much the more openly, become the more worthless: because, like the pot-herbs of the grasses, they will quickly fall.

VERS. 34.-- Without a parable. (ID.) Not that he made no discourse plain to the crowds, but because no discourse of his is found in which something of parable is not found.

But apart, the disciples. (HIER.) For they were worthy to hear the mysteries in the innermost sanctuary of wisdom, who, the tumults of their thoughts being removed, abode in the solitude of the virtues. For wisdom is to be learned in a time 196Bof leisure.

VERS. 36.-- In the ship. (BEDA.) Allegorically: the sea, the surge of the age. The little ship, the cross, by which we mount the waves of the world and come to the shore of the heavenly country. Other ships, etc., as far as for those ships perhaps had lately been made and only brought down into the harbour, or had been brought back to harbour after the perils of the sea.

VERS. 38.-- In the stern. (HIER.) The stern with dead skins holds the living and keeps off the waves, and is made solid with wood, etc., as far as: A great calm; the peace of the Church after her afflictions, or the contemplative after the active life.

Sleeping. (BEDA.) While the disciples are sailing Christ falls asleep, because, while the faithful are meditating on the rest of the kingdom to come and, by the favouring breath of the Holy Ghost or by the 196Coarage of their own effort, are casting the waves of the world behind their backs, suddenly the passion of Christ comes upon them, and as he goes up, etc., as far as but let us run back to the pilot, let us diligently rouse him, who does not serve the winds but commands them, who will still all things, who will grant the harbour of salvation.

VERS. 39.-- Peace, be still. Note that every creature feels the command of the Creator. Not that all things are animate, as the heretics lie, but that by the majesty of the founder the things which are insensible to us are sensible to him.

VERS. 40.-- Why are you fearful? (BEDA.) As if he said: Why do you fear while I am present? To which is like that which, after the resurrection, he upbraided their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they who saw him rise again did not believe (Marc. XVI). And again: 196DO foolish and slow of heart to believe in all things which the prophets have spoken! Ought not Christ to have suffered, and so to enter into his glory (Luc. XXIV)?

And they feared. Matthew: But the men wondered, saying: What manner of man is this, etc. (Matth. VIII.) Not therefore the disciples, but others who were in the ship, were wondering, doubting of him whom the sea and the wind obeyed. Or even the disciples themselves are rightly called men, because they did not yet know the power of the Saviour.

VERS. 1.-- And they came, etc. (BEDA.) Gerasa, a notable city of Arabia beyond Jordan, joined to mount Galaad in the tribe of Manasses, not far from the lake of Tiberias, 197Ainto which the swine were cast headlong, signifies, etc., as far as and he that was far off has been made nigh in the blood of Christ.

VERS. 2.-- A man with an unclean spirit. (ISID.) That most desperate man is the people of the Gentiles whom the Apostle enumerates. Puffed up, proud, unclean, bloody, an idolater, dishonourable, etc., as far as for when the fool is scourged the wise man becomes wiser, or more prudent.

VERS. 3.-- And not even with chains, etc. (BEDA.) Heavy with chains and fetters, and the two laws of the Gentiles are signified, by which sins were restrained in their commonwealth. The chains being burst (as Luke writes), he was suddenly driven by the Lord into the desert, because, those laws also being transgressed, they were hurried by lust into those crimes which now exceeded the common usage.

197BVERS. 7.-- Torment me not. (ID.) It is a great torment to him to cease from the injuring of a man, and by so much the more grievously does he let go as the longer he possesses.

VERS. 9.-- What is thy name? (BEDA.) He asks not as though ignorant, but that, the public plague which he had endured being confessed, the power of him that heals may appear the more welcome. But the priests also of our time, who cast out demons by exorcism, are wont to say: that the sufferers cannot be healed otherwise, unless, so far as they are able to understand, they plainly confess all that they have endured from the demons by sight, by hearing, or by any sense of body or of mind, waking or sleeping.

My name is Legion. (ID.) It signifies the Gentile people made over to countless cults of idolatry: against which is, etc., as far as but more 197Csects than tongues confound the reprobate by setting them at variance.

VERS. 12.-- Send us. (ID.) Luke: And they besought him that he would not command them to go into the abyss (Luc. VIII). They knew therefore that it would one day come to pass that by his coming they should be sent into the abyss, not as things now to be, etc., as far as for unless a man live after the manner of a swine, the devil receives no power over him, unless perchance to prove him, but not to destroy him.

VERS. 13.-- The herd was cast headlong. (BEDA.) Because, the Church being now made glorious and the people of the Gentiles set free from the dominion of the demons, they carry on their sacrilegious rites in hidden places, etc., as far as since for the salvation of one man two thousand swine are drowned.

VERS. 14.-- But they that fed them. Because certain chief men of the impious, although they flee the Christian law, yet by being amazed at its power 197Dand wondering at it, preach it among the Gentiles.

VERS. 15.-- And they see him. (BEDA.) Luke: Sitting at his feet. which signifies that they who have been corrected from their sins behold, with fixed intention of mind, the footsteps of the Saviour which they are to follow.

Clothed. With the zeal of the virtues, which he had lost by a maddened mind. Whence the prodigal son, returning to his father, is straightway clothed with the first robe together with the ring: because whosoever shall have repented with a true heart can, by the gift of Christ's grace, recover the former works of justice from which he had fallen, together with the ring of unviolated faith.

And they feared. For many, delighted with the old sweetness, say that they honour the Christian law but are unwilling to suffer for it, 198Abecause they cannot fulfil it, yet admiring the faithful people healed from their former manner of life.

VERS. 17.-- And they began to beseech him. (RAB.) As Peter: Depart from me, O Lord, for I am a sinful man, etc. (Luc. V.) Lest they touch the ark of God, as Oza.

VERS. 19.-- Go into thy house. (BEDA.) So let each one, after the resurrection from sins, return into a good conscience and serve the Gospel for the salvation of others: that afterwards he may rest with Christ, lest, while he too hastily wishes to be already with Christ, he neglect the mystery of preaching that is fitted to his brother's redemption.

(HIER.) The man that is healed is sent into his own house, that is, into the spiritual observance of the law: and he preaches, 198Betc., as far as because moral things are to be observed according to the letter.

(BEDA.) Matthew says that two, Mark and Luke that one, were healed of the demon, because one of them was of a more illustrious name, is of a more famous: and therefore his healing is the more famous. Allegorically: the two signify the nations from the two sons of Noe. For whereas Noe begot three sons, one was taken into the possession of God, two were given over to idols.

VERS. 22.-- And there cometh a certain man, etc. (HIER.) After these things Jairus the ruler of the synagogue comes, because when the fulness of the Gentiles shall have entered in, then all Israel, etc., as far as Abraham and Moses and Samuel pray for the dead people, and Jesus follows their prayers.

(BEDA.) Jairus, enlightening or enlightened: because 198Che enlightened the people with the words of life: and that he might be able to do this, he was enlightened by the Holy Ghost.

VERS. 23.-- For my daughter. (BEDA.) Luke: For he had one only daughter, about twelve years old, and she was dying (Luc. VIII). The daughter of the ruler of the synagogue is the Synagogue, by the legal institution alone, etc., as far as suddenly laid low by the languor of errors, she despairingly forsook the spiritual ways.

VERS. 24.-- And they thronged him. While he goes to heal the girl, he is thronged by the crowd: because, offering to the Jews the warnings of salvation by which he might raise up their sick conscience, he was burdened by the harmful custom of carnal peoples.

VERS. 25.-- And a woman, etc. As the Lord goes on toward the daughter of the ruler of the synagogue, the diseased woman of twelve years 198Dsnatches health before her, and afterwards the daughter was healed and was raised up: because the salvation of the human race was so dispensed that first some out of Israel, then the fulness of the Gentiles, and so all Israel shall be saved.

(BEDA.) It is to be noted that the girl was twelve years old and that the woman flowed with blood twelve years, etc., as far as while Christ was determining to heal Judaea, she forestalled with sure hope the salvation already prepared and promised to others.

VERS. 26.-- Having suffered many things, etc. (ID.) From false theologians, philosophers, teachers of the secular laws, who promised that they would give useful precepts of living. The demons too, etc., as far as they began both to hope for and to seek out a remedy for their languor.

199AVERS. 27.-- She came in the crowd. (ID.) If any man minister to me, let him follow me (Joan. XII). And elsewhere: Thou shalt walk after the Lord God (Ose. XI). Or because she does not see God present in the flesh, but afterwards comes to the grace of the acknowledgment of faith, etc., as far as by the evangelical sacraments, as by his own garments, he cleanses the fountains of unclean blood.

VERS. 31.-- Who touched me. (BEDA.) The faithful woman alone touches the Lord, whom the crowd accompanying him on every side throngs. Because he, who is burdened by the diverse heresies of them that disorderly throng together, or by perverse manners, is touched only by the faithful heart of the Church; whence: Touch me not: for I am not yet ascended to my Father (Joan. XX). Because to touch him truly is to believe him equal to the Father.

199B(HIER.) By the seventh virtue the dead girl is raised, but on the way the woman with the issue of blood touches the hem from behind, who together with health her substance, etc., as far as the cymbal, confession; the pomegranate signifies the will of martyrdom and the whiteness of the virtues.

VERS. 33.-- But the woman. (BEDA.) Behold whither the questioning tended, namely, that the woman should confess the truth of her long infirmity, and of her sudden believing and healing: and that so she herself might be confirmed in faith and might afford an example to others.

VERS. 35.-- While he was yet, etc. (BEDA.) The woman being healed, straightway the girl is announced dead: because the Church of the Gentiles, cured of the stain of vices, and for the merit of her faith, etc., as far as but what is impossible to men is possible to God.

199CVERS. 36.-- To the ruler of the synagogue. The ruler of the synagogue is the company of the teachers of the law, of whom: Upon the chair of Moses have sitten the scribes and the Pharisees (Matth. XXVIII). And if they shall be willing to believe, the Synagogue also that is subject to them shall be saved.

VERS. 37.-- And he admitted not, etc. (BEDA.) The mysteries are not to be revealed to blasphemers and mockers, but to the faithful who may honour them. Whence elsewhere: Wisdom is justified by all her children (Matth. XI).

VERS. 38.-- Weeping and wailing. (ID). Let all rejoice that hope in the Lord, and they shall exult for ever, and thou shalt dwell in them (Psal. V). This gladness the Synagogue lost by the desert of her unbelief: and therefore she lies dead among those that weep and howl. But Jesus does not suffer her to perish utterly.

199DVERS. 39.-- She is not dead. To me, in whose disposing both the soul that has been received lives and the flesh that is to be raised rests. Hence it is a custom among Christians that the dead, who are not doubted to be about to rise again, are called sleepers; whence: We will not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning them that sleep (I Thess. IV).

(BEDA.) Since the soul that shall have sinned dies, yet that soul which the Lord foresees unto eternal life may not unfittingly be said to have been dead indeed to us, but to have fallen asleep to him.

VERS. 40.-- All being cast out. (ID.) The crowd is cast out that the girl may be raised: because unless the multitude of secular cares be cast out from the heart, the soul that lies dead within is not raised. For while it scatters itself through all 200Aits thoughts, it in no wise gathers itself to the consideration of itself.

VERS. 41.-- Talitha cumi. In the Syriac speech which the evangelist sets down it is no more than: Girl, arise. But perhaps to express the force of the Lord's command he added this: I say to thee, arise, and took care to convey the sense of the speaker rather than his words. So often the apostles and the evangelists, when they take up some testimony, set down the sense rather than the words.

(HIER.) To the girl it is said Talitha cumi, that is, Girl, arise. To the ruler of the synagogue, etc., as far as whence it is said: Abraham believed God, and it was reputed to him unto justice (Jac. II).

(BEDA.) That Christ raised three dead persons signifies three kinds of souls. He raises the girl, etc., 200Bas far as he heard of a fourth dead man when a disciple announced it: but because living men to pray for him were wanting: Let, he says, the dead bury their dead (Matth. VIII).

VERS. 2.-- Whence hath this man, etc. Wonderful blindness. In his deeds and in his words they are able to know Christ, for the mere knowledge of his stock they despise him.

VERS. 3.-- A craftsman. (BEDA.) He who works with fire and with spirit; whence: He shall baptize you in fire and in spirit (Joan. I) [Vulg. Matt. III, 11 and Luc. III, 16 read ipse vos baptizabit in Spiritu Sancto, et igni, "in the Holy Ghost and fire", in the reverse order; Joan. I, 33 has only the Holy Ghost]. He is the craftsman who crafted the dawn and the sun.

VERS. 4.-- A prophet is not without honour. It is well-nigh natural that fellow-citizens should envy fellow-citizens, because they remember not his works but the childhood 200Cwhich they saw.

(ISID.) Meanness often attends a man's origin. As, Who is the son of Isai (III Reg. XII). But: The Lord beholdeth the lowly, and the high he knoweth afar off (Psal. CXXXVII).

VERS. 5.-- And he could not, etc. Lest by doing many mighty works he should condemn the worse his unbelieving fellow-citizens. Or because he is despised in his own country, he did few mighty works and signs there, lest they should be wholly excusable. Greater signs he does daily among the Gentiles, not so much in the healing of bodies as of souls.

VERS. 6.-- And he wondered. (BEDA.) Not as at something unforeseen, but he shows it as a thing to be wondered at, because they believe neither the prophets, nor him whom they behold present.

VERS. 7.-- And he called. (HIER.) The twelve 200Dapostles are sent, and there is given them power, precepts of teaching, that word and deed together may accompany them: and that mighty works may be mingled with invisible promises, and so, when they anoint the sick with oil, they strengthen the weakness of faith by a mighty work.

And he gave them, etc. The kind Lord and master does not grudge his own power to his disciples and servants. But he acts by his own power, they by their own weakness, if they do anything, and they confess the Lord's might, saying: In the name of Jesus arise and walk (Act. III).

VERS. 8.-- That they should take nothing, etc. Let their confidence in the Lord be so great that they may know most certainly that nothing is wanting, lest, while they provide temporal things for themselves, they provide eternal things the less for others.

201A(BEDA.) Matthew and Luke record that the Lord said to his disciples that they should not carry even a staff: Mark, that they should take nothing save a staff. But they take the staff really. Mark understands by the staff the power of receiving what is necessary from those subject to them.

VERS. 9.-- Shod with sandals. (ID.) That the foot be neither covered nor bare to the ground, that is, that neither the Gospel be hidden, nor lean upon earthly advantages.

That they should not put on two coats. (ID.) Which is, that they should walk in singleness, not in doubleness.

VERS. 11.-- Shake off the dust from your feet. (ID.) The dust is shaken off from the feet in testimony of their labour, that they have entered the city, that the preaching has reached even unto them. Or that they have received nothing from them 201Btoward the food that was needful, who despised the Gospel.

VERS. 13.-- And they anointed with oil. (ID.) James says: Is any man sick among you? let him bring in the priests of the Church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil (Jac. V), etc. Whence it is plain that this custom was handed down from the apostles, that the possessed and other sick persons should be anointed with oil consecrated by a bishop.

VERS. 14.-- And the king heard. (ID.) Luke (Luc. IX): Herod the tetrarch heard all things that were done, etc. Whence it is to be understood that either, being confirmed by the words of others, he said it in belief, or that he was still hesitating, etc., as far as they chose rather to believe that he had not risen again, but had been carried off by stealth.

VERS. 17.-- Of Philip his brother. (BEDA.) An ancient 201Chistory relates that Philip was the son of the elder Herod, and the brother of that Herod under whom the Lord suffered, and that he married Herodias the daughter of Aretas, and that afterwards Aretas, quarrels having arisen, took away his own daughter, and joined her in marriage to Herod, the enemy of Philip, to Philip's own grief. Egesippus, however, or Josephus, far otherwise.

VERS. 18.-- It is not lawful for thee to have, etc. (ID.) He who had come in the spirit and power of Elias reproves Herod and Herodias, as, etc., as far as for man is born to labour, and the saints pass through death to rest.

VERS. 23.-- And he swore. (BEDA.) He is not excused from perjury by his oath. For perhaps he swore for this reason, that he might find an occasion of killing. And if she had asked the death of her father or 201Dof her mother, Herod assuredly would not have granted it.

VERS. 26.-- And being made sorrowful, etc. (ID.) Made sorrowful after the accustomed manner of Scripture, not in fact, but in the opinion of many. As Joseph himself also, etc., as far as that under the occasion of piety he might become impious.

VERS. 27.-- His head in a dish. (ID.) The head of the law, which is Christ, is cut off from the body, etc., as far as but Christ, who is the light of the world, when the days begin to grow.

VERS. 29.-- And they took. (ID.) Josephus relates that John was bound, brought into the castle of Macherus and there beheaded. The Ecclesiastical history relates that it was in Sebaste, a city of Palestine, which was once called Samaria. 202ABut in the time of Julian, etc., as far as the temple of Serapis being purged of its filth, he laid those same bones there, and consecrated a basilica in honour of Saint John.

VERS. 30.-- And gathering together. (HIER.) To the place whence the rivers go out they return. They always render thanks to God for those things which they have received.

All things. The apostles report to the Lord not only what they themselves had done and taught, but also what John suffered while they were teaching. Either his own disciples, or those of the same John, as Matthew writes.

VERS. 31.-- Come apart. (BEDA.) Not only for the sake of a seeking again, but mystically it signifies that, Judaea being left, which, etc., as far as he comes apart, he leads those whom he chooses, that among men living ill they may not attend to evil things, 202Bas Lot in Sodom, and Job in the land of Hus, and Abdias in the house of Achab.

Rest ye. As the birds in the branches of the mustard. Little is the rest here for the saints, long the labour: but afterwards it is said to them that they should rest from their labours.

For there were, etc. (HIER.) In the ark of Noe the animals that were within were sent forth, and those that were without burst in. So in the Church Judas, etc., as far as then shall the wind and the storm cease, Jesus sitting and reigning in the ship, which is the universal Church.

VERS. 32.-- They went away in the desert. (BEDA.) By seeking solitude he tries the faith of the crowds, whether it follows him, and having tried it he rewards it with a worthy recompense. But the crowds, not with beasts of burden, not with carriages, but by the very labour 202Cof their feet, take up the journey of the desert, and show their desire of salvation. Again, by receiving the weary, by teaching the ignorant, by healing the sick, by refreshing the fasting, he intimates how much he is delighted by the devotion of them that believe.

VERS. 33.-- And on foot. Note that they did not come to the other bank of the sea without a sailing of the Jordan. But, some strait or lake being passed over, they went to the nearest places of the same region, whither even the natives on foot were able to come.

VERS. 34.-- And he had compassion. (BEDA.) How he had compassion Matthew sets forth more fully in this manner: And he had compassion on them, and healed their infirmities. [Vulg. Matt. XIV, 14 reads curavit languidos eorum, "healed their sick"; the gloss immediately following expounds the healing of the sick, not of infirmities] For this is truly to have compassion on the poor and on them that have no shepherd, and to open the way of truth, and the languishing 202Dto heal, and by refreshing the fasting to hearten them to the praise of the heavenly bounty; and the things that follow declare that he did this.

VERS. 35.-- And when the hour was now. The day being far spent, the Saviour refreshes the crowds, because either as the end of the age draws near, or when the sun of justice set for us, we were delivered from the long hunger of spiritual want.

(BEDA.) Christ, as he seeks the desert places of the Gentiles, many bands of the faithful follow, the walls of their former manner of life being left and the safeguard of divers doctrines neglected, and whereas God was first known in Judaea, then was he exalted above the heavens, and his glory above all the earth.

VERS. 37.-- Give ye them. He provokes the apostles to the breaking 203Aof bread, that, when they testified that they had none, the greatness magnitudino of the sign might become known. And intimating that daily through them fasting hearts are to be fed, when by their examples or by their words we are stirred up to love heavenly things. It is to be noted that John, about to write this miracle of the loaves, set before it that the Pasch was at hand. Matthew and Mark say that this was done immediately when John had been killed: whence it is gathered that John was beheaded when the Pasch was imminent, and that the Lord was crucified at the next following Pasch.

VERS. 38.-- Five. (BEDA.) The five loaves, the five books of the Mosaic law, in which is the knowledge of the divine eternity, the creation of the world, the course of the passing age, and the true religion of serving God, etc., as far as but at the last with a great gift he grants to the elect that they may eat and 203Bdrink at his table in his kingdom.

VERS. 39.-- By companies. (ID.) The diverse reclinings, the distinct orders of the churches which make one catholic Church.

VERS. 40.-- By hundreds and by fifties. By fifty, the rest of the jubilee. But the number fifty taken twice makes a hundred; and therefore it signifies the perfection of both rests, namely, of the body and of the mind. For he who rests from depraved acts has the rest of the body. But he who rests from perverse thoughts also has the rest of the mind.

And well do they that recline upon the green grass feed upon the nourishments of God, who by the pursuit of abstinence, the allurements of the flesh being trodden down, bestow their pains upon hearing and fulfilling the words of God.

203CTherefore some are by fifties, others by hundreds, because rest is first had from evil work, that afterwards there may be rest in the mind also.

VERS. 41.-- And having taken. He creates no new viands, because, being incarnate, he preaches no other things than those which had been written: but he shows that the law and the prophets are big with mysteries.

He broke. And he distributed to his disciples the things to be set before the crowds, because he laid open the sacraments to the holy teachers, who should preach them throughout the whole world.

VERS. 43.-- And they took up, etc. (BEDA.) The more secret mysteries, which the untaught cannot grasp, the more perfect diligently search out. For by the baskets, the twelve apostles: and by the apostles the teachers that follow are figured, despised without, within heaped up with the leavings of the saving food 203Dfor the feeding of humble hearts. For in baskets servile works are carried: but he filled them with the bread of the fragments, who chose the weak things of the world, that he might break or confound.

VERS. 44.-- Five thousand. (ID.) Because of the five senses of the body. These, having followed the Lord, signify those who, being still set in a secular habit, know how to use well the outward things which they possess. Who are rightly fed with five loaves: because it is needful that such be still instructed by the precepts of the law. But they who wholly renounce the world are four thousand and are refreshed with seven loaves, that is, lofty in evangelical perfection, and inwardly taught by spiritual grace.

VERS. 45.-- And immediately he constrained. He gives us an example 204Athat in all the good things which we do we should shun the recompense of human favour: lest the working of virtues bend us to the desire of temporal things. And the Lord himself, intimating this to us, when they who admired his mighty works wished to make him king, fled into the mountain to pray. He readily met his crucifiers, namely, that we may be ready to bear adversities, wary toward flatteries if they should smile upon us, and that, lest they deceive us by softening us if they abound, we should implore the Lord with frequent prayers.

To Bethsaida. (BEDA.) Bethsaida is a city in Galilee, of Andrew and of Peter and of Philip, near the lake of Genesareth. But Mark says, etc., as far as both of which are cities in Galilee beside the lake of Genesareth: which is also called of Tiberias, from the city of Tiberias 204Bbeing so named.

VERS. 46.-- He went into the mountain. (ID.) He prays well who seeks God by praying, and, advancing from earthly things to the higher, ascends the summit of a loftier court. He who concerning riches, etc., as far as he can do all that he wills, because he is our advocate and our judge; the one the office of loving-kindness, the other the mark of power.

VERS. 47.-- And he alone, etc. Who sometimes seems to have forsaken the Church altogether in her perils; whence: Why, O Lord, hast thou retired afar off (Psal. X) etc. But because he defers his help, he does not take away his succour.

VERS. 48.-- And about the fourth. (BEDA.) The military stations and watches are divided by a space of hours: it is plain therefore that they, etc., as far as for the morning star is 204Csaid to give light for three hours of the night, that is, for the whole morning watch.

And he would have passed by them. (ID.) That for an hour, namely, being troubled: but straightway set free, they might the more marvel at the miracle of their deliverance, and to their deliverer, etc., as far as When thou shalt walk in the fire, thou shalt not be burnt, and the flame shall not burn in thee;

VERS. 49.-- They thought. (BEDA.) Even yet heretics think that he is a phantasm, and that he did not take true flesh of the Virgin. For Theodorus, etc., as far as and how, with feet not sinking in, having a bodily weight and a material burden, he walked upon the moist and unstable substance.

VERS. 50.-- Fear ye not. The first relief is to drive away fear; the second, to quell the tempest by the power of his own 204Dpresence. Nor is it wonderful that, when the Lord goes up into the ship, the wind ceases: because in whatever heart he is present through the grace of his love, straightway all the wars of the vices and of the opposing world and of malignant spirits are stilled.

VERS. 52.-- For they understood not. (BEDA.) By the miracle of the loaves he showed that he was the founder of things. By walking upon the waves, that he had his whole body free from every heaviness of sin. By calming the winds and the waves he showed that he had dominion over the elements. But the disciples, being yet carnal, were astonished indeed at the greatness of the mighty works, but did not know the truth of the divine majesty.

VERS. 54.-- They knew him. By report, not by his face nor by 205Athe greatness of his signs: he was also known by his countenance to very many.

VERS. 56.-- The hem of his garment. (BEDA.) The least commandment, which whosoever shall have transgressed shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven: or the assumption of flesh through which we come to the Word of God.

VERS. 1.-- And they come together. (ID.) It is plain how true is that confession of the Lord to the Father in which it is said: Because thou hast hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them to little ones (Matth. XI). The unlearned come, they bring the sick, that they may touch even his hem, and therefore, having desired health, they suffer. But the Pharisees and the Scribes, who ought to have been the teachers of the people, run together not to 205Bhear the word, not as to a physician, but to the battles of questionings.

VERS. 2.-- With common hands. (HIERON.) By unclean, or common, hands he signifies the communion of the Gentiles. The cleanness of the Pharisees is barren; the communion of the apostles does not wholly stretch out its branches as far as the sea. Not washed. They find fault over the unwashed hands of the body, though in their works nothing of uncleanness is found. They themselves, washed outwardly with water, are inwardly polluted with the rancour of conscience.

VERS. 3.-- The Pharisees. (BEDA.) The superstitious tradition of men, to wash the oftener, for the sake of eating and the like. But the necessary teaching of truth bids those who desire to eat the bread of life which came down from heaven to cleanse their works by the frequent lament of alms and of the other 205Cfruits of justice.

VERS. 4.-- Washings. In vain do they keep the washings of vessels, who neglect the filth of their own hearts and bodies. For this was not said of material hands, but for the cleansing of minds, and the chastisement of works, and the holiness and salvation of souls.

VERS. 5.-- Why do thy disciples, etc. Wondrous folly! They accuse the Son of God because he does not keep the precepts of men. But the hands, that is, the works not of the body but of the soul, are to be washed, that the Word of God may be wrought in them.

VERS. 6.-- Well did he prophesy. (HIERON.) The fork of reason represses the barking of the Pharisees, that is, by the rebuke of Moses and of Isaias, that we too may be able to overcome heretics by the words 205Dof Scripture.

VERS. 9.-- Well do you make void. He refutes the false calumny by true reasoning, as if, You, for the tradition of men, despise and neglect the precepts of God, why then do you accuse my disciples, who make little of the commands of the elders, that they may keep the commandments of God?

VERS. 11.-- But you say. (BEDA.) The Lord, taking counsel for the weakness whether of age or of the poverty of parents, commanded, etc., as far as to him who is the true Father let the oblation of the Lord be preferred. It shall profit thee. (ISID.) It is consumed for thy own uses, which is sacrilege. Or interrogatively. As if he said: Will it profit thee? It ought not: fearing this, parents were afflicted with hunger.

VERS. 15.-- There is nothing outside, etc. (BEDA.) Nor 206Ais it the meat offered to idols, in so far as it is food, in so far as it is a creature of God, but the invocation of demons, that makes this unclean. Whence: You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons (I Cor. X).

The Jews boast themselves the portion of God, and call those foods common which all men use, such as oysters, hares, and animals of this kind, which do not divide the hoof, nor chew the cud, nor, among fishes, are scaly.

VERS. 18.-- And you also are without understanding. They are rebuked because they think those things mystical which are plain of themselves. From which we perceive him to be a faulty hearer who wishes to understand obscure things plainly, or things plainly said obscurely.

VERS. 19.-- And into the draught. (BEDA.) Hence certain heretics cavil that the Lord, ignorant of natural 206Bphilosophy, supposes all foods, etc., as far as it slips away through hidden passages (which the Greeks call poros) to the lower parts, and goes into the draught.

(AUG.) Some things so come to us that they both change and are changed, just as food itself, losing its own appearance, is turned into our body, and we, refreshed, are changed into strength.

VERS. 21.-- From the heart of men. (BEDA.) The chief seat of the soul is not, according to Plato, in the brain, but, according to Christ, in the heart. They are also reproved, etc., as far as so that, if he has often seen us gaze upon a beautiful woman, he understands that we love her.

VERS. 24.-- And rising up from thence. Leaving the Scribes and Pharisees, those calumniators, he withdrew into the parts of Tyre and Sidon, that he might heal the Tyrians and the Sidonians. No man. 206C(BEDA.) Although he could not be hid, yet what he willed was not done. But an example, etc., as far as that he might free the daughter of the Syrophoenician woman from the demon, and by the faith of a Gentile woman convict the perfidy of the Scribes and the Pharisees.

VERS. 25.-- For a woman. Mark says that the Lord was in the house when the woman came to him. Matthew says that she crieth after us (Matth. XV). By which he hints that she poured out her prayers behind him as he walked. The woman therefore came to him into the house, but because Matthew says: He answered her not a word, he gave it to be understood that both were silent, and that they entered in silence. And so the rest is woven together, and in nothing do they disagree.

(HIER.) The woman is our Roman mother of the Church. The daughter is the demon-possessed barbarism of the West, whose 206Dfaith made a sheep out of a dog. She seeks the crumbs of understanding; she does not desire the unbroken bread of the letter.

(BEDA.) The woman, a Gentile, but coming to the Lord with faith, signifies the Church gathered out of the Gentiles, who for her daughter, etc., as far as who leave the ancient dwellings of their perfidy, and betake themselves with pious devotion into the house of God, that is, the Church.

VERS. 27.-- Suffer first the children to be filled. As if he said: It shall come to pass that you Gentiles also obtain salvation: but first the Jews, who by the ancient election are named the sons of God, must be refreshed with the heavenly bread, and so at last the food of life be ministered to the Gentiles. Of the children. (BEDA.) A wondrous turning about: for Israel was once the son, we the dogs. According to the diversity of faith the order of the names is changed. 207AOf them it is said: Many dogs have compassed me (Psal. XXI). Of us: Other sheep I have, that are not of this fold (Joan. X).

VERS. 28.-- Of the crumbs. I am not worthy to receive whole meats; I am content with the leavings of the whelps, that so I may come to the whole bread. (BEDA.) Of the crumbs, etc. The table is Scripture, whence: Thou hast prepared a table before me, etc. (Psal. XXII). The crumbs of the children, etc., as far as that by the merit of humility they may raise themselves up to hope for the things above, the rewards which have been promised by the Lord in heaven.

VERS. 29.-- For this saying. (BEDA.) Here is given an example of catechizing and baptizing infants, because by the faith and confession of their parents little ones are freed from the demon in baptism, who cannot yet of themselves have understanding, or do anything of good or of evil.

207BVERS. 31.-- Of Tyre. (HIERON.) Tyre, meaning straitness, signifies Judea, to which the Lord says: The bed is straitened and the covering short: the one cannot cover both, so that he may betake himself to other nations (Isai. XVIII). Sidon. (HIERON.) Sidon, a hunting, an untamed wild beast, is our own region or nation. Of Decapolis. (BEDA.) The region of ten cities beyond the Jordan toward the east. But where it is said: He came to the sea of Galilee, through the midst of the coasts of Decapolis, this does not signify that he entered them; for neither is he said to have sailed across the sea, but to have come as far as the sea, and to a place which looked toward the midst of the coasts of Decapolis, set far beyond the sea.

(HIERON.) The Saviour is led by the apostles to the saving of the Gentiles, and teaches what he answered to the young man who questioned him: Thou knowest the commandments; do these things, and thou shalt live (Luc. XVIII).

207CVERS. 32.-- One deaf and dumb. (BEDA.) One, namely, who opens neither his ears to hear the words of God, nor his mouth to speak them. Such men they who have learned by long use to hear and to speak the word of God must needs offer to the Lord to be healed, that those whom human frailty cannot [heal], the right hand of grace may save.

(HIERON.) The human race, as one man consumed by divers plagues in the first-formed man, is blinded while it sees, is made deaf while it hears, its nose is wiped while it smells, it is struck dumb while it speaks, it is made maimed while it lifts up its hands, it is bowed down while it is raised up, it becomes dropsical while it lusts, lame while it goes forward, it is overspread with leprosy while it is cleansed, it is filled with a demon while it aspires to divinity, it dies the death while it boldly excuses itself. 207DAnd they besought him. The prophets and the patriarchs desired the incarnation of the Lord.

VERS. 33.-- And taking him, etc. He who deserves to be healed is led apart from turbulent thoughts, from disordered deeds, and from ill-composed discourses. The fingers which are put into the ears are the words of the Holy Spirit, of whom it is said: This is the finger of God (Exod. VIII). And: The heavens are the works of thy fingers (Psal. VIII). He touched his tongue, etc. The foam from the flesh of the Lord is the divine wisdom, which looses the ignorance of the human race, so that it may say: I believe in God the Father almighty, etc. Apart. (BEDA.) The first way of salvation is to be led out from the crowd. The Lord leads the sick man out from the crowd, when the mind, by sins, etc., as far as therefore, spitting, he touches 208Athe tongue of the dumb man that it may be able to speak, when by the touch of his loving-kindness he forms mouths long brutish to utter the words of wisdom.

VERS. 34.-- And looking up, etc. (HIERON.) He groaned. He taught us to groan, and to lift up to heaven the treasure of our heart, which is purified by compunction of heart from the frivolous gladness of the flesh, as it is said: I roared with the groaning of my heart; Lord, all my desire is before thee, etc. And he said to him: Ephpheta, which is, Be thou opened. With the heart we believe unto justice (Rom. X), etc. And immediately they were opened, etc. The ears are opened to hymns and canticles and psalms. The tongue is loosed, that it may utter forth a good word, which neither threats nor words can restrain or forbid. Whence Paul: I am bound, but the word of God is not bound in me (I Tim. II).

208BVERS. 36.-- And he charged them that they should tell no man. He taught that we must glory not in mighty works, but in the cross and in humiliation. But the more he charged them, etc. A city set on a mountain and looked upon from every side cannot be hid (Matth. XV): humility always goes before glory.

Be thou opened. Properly, to the ears. For the ears were to be opened for hearing, and the tongue was to be loosed that it might be able to speak. Whence it follows: Immediately they were opened, etc.

VERS. 35.-- And he spoke right. (BEDA.) He alone speaks rightly, whether by confessing the Lord or by preaching to others, whose hearing divine grace brings back, that he may be able to hearken and be obedient to the heavenly commandments. Whose tongue the Lord instructs to speak by the touch of wisdom, which he himself is. Such a one can say: 208CO Lord, thou wilt open my lips (Psal. V), etc.

VERS. 36.-- But the more he charged them, etc. He who knows all things before they come to pass knew that they would preach the more; and by so charging them he willed to show to the slothful how much more diligently and how much more frequently [ferventius] they ought to preach, whom he commands to preach: since those who were forbidden could not hold their peace.

VERS. 2.-- I have compassion on the crowd. Because as true man he has compassion and suffers with them in the affection of human frailty. That with seven loaves and a few little fishes he filled four thousand men is the work of divine power, against the error of Eutyches.

Three days they continue with me. Why they should continue three days Matthew 208Dtells thus (Matth. XV): And going up into a mountain he sat there, and they came to him, etc. The crowd continues with the Lord three days for the healing of their sick, when all the elect, made bright to the Lord by faith in the holy Trinity, make instant supplication for their own sins and for those of their people, that is, for the languors of the sinning soul.

A great crowd continues with the Lord three days, when the multitude of the faithful, turning aside from their sins by penance, turns itself to the Lord in deed, in speech, and in thought.

(BEDA.) By this miracle it is signified that we cannot otherwise pass unharmed the way of the present world: that Christ refresh us with the food of his word. But this typically, etc., as far as he himself refreshes with the bread of heaven [the soul] drawn away from the lowest delights, 209Aand kindles it, by the pledge given of spiritual food, to a longing for the sweetness above.

VERS. 3.-- If I shall send them away. Because converted sinners faint in the way of the present life, if they are dismissed into their own conscience without the food of doctrine.

From afar. Morally. He who, having known nothing of carnal corruption, hastens to the service of God, does not come from afar; he too who, defiled by no immodesty and by no shameful deeds, has known wedlock only, neither does he come from afar. Others come after many shameful deeds: and therefore from afar.

VERS. 5.-- Seven. (BEDA.) It is the mystery of the New Testament, in which the sevenfold grace of the Spirit is more fully believed and given. Nor are they barley loaves, 209Blike those five with which five thousand men were filled, lest, as in the law, the food of the living soul should be covered over with bodily sacraments. For the pith of barley is covered with a most clinging husk.

(HIER.) The seven loaves are the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. The four thousand are the year of the New Testament with its four seasons. The seven baskets are the seven first Churches. The fragments of the loaves are the mystical understandings of the first week. The blessed little fishes are the books of the New Testament: as when, rising again, he asks for a piece of broiled fish, and, at the catch of fishes, offers the disciples a fish laid upon the coals.

VERS. 6.-- Upon the ground. (BEDA.) At the refreshment of the five loaves the crowd sat down upon the grass; but that which is to be refreshed with seven loaves is bidden to sit down upon the ground 209C: because by the law of the flesh, etc., as far as but here, all carnal desire being removed, the firm ground of an abiding hope, as it were the solidity of the mountain itself, holds the guests of the New Testament, with no grass laid between.

VERS. 7.-- Little fishes. (ID.) The saints of that time, by whom that same Scripture was composed; or whose faith, life and passions Scripture itself contains: who, snatched out of the waves of the world and consecrated by the divine blessing, furnished us refreshment by the example of their life and of their death, lest we faint in the course of this world.

VERS. 8.-- They did eat. (ID.) There are many who, although they cannot leave all their goods and fulfil the higher things of this world, yet, hungering and thirsting after justice, 209Dare filled, when, hearing the commandments of God, they come to life eternal.

That which was over. (ID.) The higher precepts or exhortations and counsels, which the general multitude of the faithful cannot attain, as here: If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell all that thou hast (Matth. XIX), etc.

Seven baskets. The seven baskets are those filled with the sevenfold grace of the Holy Spirit. For baskets are made of rushes and of the leaves of palms. The rush is born upon the waters; the palm crowns the victor. The saints too, lest they wither away from the moisture of eternity, set themselves in the very fountain of life, and look for the palm of the eternal reward.

VERS. 10.-- And immediately. For this we have in Matthew: He went up into a boat, and came into the coasts of Magedan. 210ABut it is not to be doubted that the same place is meant under either name. For very many codices have Magedan in Mark also.

VERS. 11.-- Seeking, etc. As though the things they had seen had not been signs. But what they seek is determined by this: from heaven, either fire from on high after the manner of Elias, or, after the likeness of Samuel, that thunders should bellow in summer time, or lightnings, or showers, as if they could not cavil at these too, who were cavilling at the things they had seen with their eyes, touched with their hand, and felt by their profit. Or signs from heaven, manna: that he who with a few loaves filled many thousands of men should now, like Moses, refresh the whole people everywhere with manna sent down from heaven. Whence John says that after the eating of the loaves the crowds asked: What dost thou work? Our fathers did eat 210Bmanna in the desert (Joan. VI), etc.

VERS. 12.-- If a sign shall be given. (AUG.) On the Concord of the Evangelists. He says that in Mark it is written thus: and a sign shall not be given to it.

(BEDA.) To this generation, that is, of those tempting God and contradicting his words, there shall not be given a sign from heaven, which they that tempt him, etc., as far as at the imposition of the hands of the apostles he poured out from heaven the grace of the Holy Spirit upon very many that believed.

VERS. 13.-- He went up into the ship. (ID.) The seven baskets being but now filled, immediately they went up into the boat and came into the coasts of Magedan; and there it was said to them as they sailed that they should beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees. But the Scripture says that they had forgotten to take bread, wherein it is shown that they had little care 210Cof the flesh, being intent upon the presence of the Lord.

VERS. 17.-- Why do you reason. (BEDA.) Taking the occasion, he teaches what the five loaves and the seven signify, and the few little fishes, and the five thousand men or the four. For if the leaven of the Pharisees and of Herod signifies perverse traditions and heretical dogmas, why do the foods with which the people of God was nourished not signify true and entire doctrine?

VERS. 23.-- And spitting. (ID.) The spittle proceeds from within, from the head of the Lord. But the hands are members of the body set without. Spitting therefore into the eyes of the blind man, he lays his hands upon him, that he may see: because he wiped away the blindness of the human race both by the invisible gifts of the divine loving-kindness and by the sacraments of the humanity he assumed, shown forth from without.

210DHim whom he could have healed wholly and at once with a single word, he heals little by little, that he may show the greatness of human blindness: and that it scarcely and as it were by degrees comes back to the light, and he makes known to us his grace, by which the several increases of perfection lend their aid.

VERS. 24.-- I see men, etc. (HIER.) He esteems all men above himself, judging himself unworthy: as David [refused] to be called a man, but a dead dog and a single flea. But first, etc., as far as to him the Lord, by a second imposition of hands, restored the light of seeing all things clearly: namely, what is to be believed, how one is to live, what rewards are to be hoped for.

VERS. 25.-- Then again, etc. (HIER.) That he might see all things clearly, that is, that through visible works he might understand the invisible, 211Aand the things which the eye hath not seen, and might contemplate with the eye of a clean heart the clear state of his own soul after the rust of sin. For blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God (Matth. V).

VERS. 26.-- And he sent him. (HIER.) That he might see in himself what before he did not see. For a man despairing of salvation does not think that he can at all do that which, being enlightened, he is able to accomplish through hope.

Mystically. The Lord admonishes all who are enlightened by the acknowledging of the truth to return to their heart, and with a careful mind to weigh how much had been granted them, and to answer the benefits of God with worthy working.

Tell it to nobody. (BEDA.) That he bids the healing be kept silent is an example to his own, that, if they do things to be wondered at, they should not seek favour, but be content to please 211Bthe divine gaze.

VERS. 27.-- Whom do men say that I am? Fitly does he first ask the opinion of men, lest their confession should seem weakened by the opinion of the crowd, but by the acknowledging of the truth: lest, like Herod, they be thought to waver about the things they had heard. Whence he says to Peter, according to Matthew: Flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee (Matth. XVI), that is, the teaching of men.

Men. Fitly are they called men who after the manner of men bring forth a divergent opinion concerning the Lord. For they who with a pious mind acknowledge the truth of his power deserve to be called, not men, but gods. Whence he says to them: But you, etc. As if he said: They, being men, opine the things of men; but you, being gods, whom do you say that I am?

VERS. 29.-- Thou art the Christ. (BEDA.) He embraces all things 211Cwho expresses both the nature and the name, in which is the sum of the virtues. Paul says, etc., as far as yet it is not permitted to be ignorant of the faith of his generation.

VERS. 30.-- And he charged them. (BEDA.) He would not have himself preached before the passion and the resurrection: because, the sacrament of his blood being accomplished, he says to the apostles more opportunely: Going, teach ye all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost (Matth. XVIII). Because it would not profit that he be publicly preached whom they were about to see scourged, and crucified, and suffering many things.

VERS. 31.-- That it behoveth, etc. (HIER.) As a skilled pilot, guarding against a storm while it is calm, wills his own sailors to be ready. As elsewhere: If any man will come after me, let him deny himself (Matth. XVI), etc.

VERS. 32.-- And taking him. (BEDA.) With the affection of one that loves, 211Dsaying: Far be it from thee, Lord. Or, as it is better had in the Greek: Be thou merciful, etc., as far as and he takes hold of him into his own affection, or leads him aside, lest he seem to rebuke his master while the rest are present.

VERS. 33.-- Go behind. (ID.) Many think that it was not Peter, but the adversary spirit, that was corrected, at whose suggestion the Apostle said this: But to me the Apostle's error, coming from the affection of piety, will never seem the devil's prompting. To the devil it is said: Go behind, Satan. [Vulg. Matt. 4:10 reads Vade Satana, "Go, Satan," without the adverb] To Peter: Go behind me, etc., that is, follow my judgment.

The things that are of God, etc. It is my will and the Father's that I should die for the salvation of men: thou wilt not have the grain of wheat 212Afall into the ground, that it may bring forth much fruit.

VERS. 34.-- If any man will, etc. (BEDA.) After he had shown the mystery of his passion and of his resurrection, he exhorts all to imitate the example of the passion, and to all he promises the salvation of souls. But to the more perfect he disclosed how great things he was to suffer, and that he was to rise again from the dead, giving thereby a form of preaching: namely, that each be instructed according to his own measure, and that higher things be not committed to the weak.

Let him deny himself. He is not able to lay hold of what is beyond himself, if he has not known how to slay what he is. Unless a man fail to his own self, he does not draw near to God, who is above him. Let him take up his cross. Either by wearing down the body through abstinence, or the mind through compassion. Of the body Paul says: I chastise my body, and bring it into 212Bsubjection (II Cor. IX), etc. The same, of compassion of mind: Who is weak, and I am not weak? (II Cor. XI.)

VERS. 38.-- For he that shall be ashamed. (BEDA.) The Church signifies two times: one of persecution, when the soul must be laid down; the other of peace, when earthly desires must be broken.

For he that shall be ashamed of me, etc. Because many overcome avarice and despise things that pass away, but, hindered by bashfulness, do not utter with the voice the rightness of faith which they hold. He adds: For he that shall be ashamed of me, etc.

VERS. 39.-- Amen I say. (BEDA.) Since he was speaking of the life to come, it was therefore necessary that he should promise this concerning the penitent life, that the disciples, as yet untaught, might be strengthened by this consolation, as it is said of the Jewish 212Cpeople: He gave them the lands of the Gentiles, and they possessed the labours of the peoples, that they might keep his justifications, and seek after his law (Psal. CIV).

The kingdom of God, etc. That is, the Church raised up against the glory of this world. Or the blessedness to come in heaven, which they saw upon the mountain. Which was done by a merciful provision, that the eternal joy, though foretasted for a brief moment, might the more strongly hearten them to bear adversities.

VERS. 1.-- And after days, etc. (HIER.) After the threatening of the cross the glory of the resurrection is shown, whence there follows:

And after days, etc. That they might not fear the reproaches of the cross, who had seen with their own eyes the glory of the resurrection to come.

212D(BEDA.) And after six days. Luke: And it came to pass, about eight days after these words, etc., as far as lest in the eighth time of retribution we be seized upon by an angry judge. Into a high mountain. Into a mountain, that he might pray, etc., as far as then shall they deserve to rejoice in the eternal vision of him.

Transfigured. He did not lose the true substance of the flesh, but showed the glory of his own resurrection to come, or of ours. Such will he appear to all the elect after the judgment: at the judgment, in the form of a servant, to the good and to the wicked alike, so that the impious may not be able to recognize as judge him whom they spurned, whom the Jews denied, whom the soldiers crucified, whom Pilate and Herod judged [nequeant; read queant, "may be able"].

213AVERS. 2.-- And his garments. The garments of the Lord are the saints. Whence: You who have been baptized in Christ have put on Christ (Gal. III). These, while the Lord remained in the world, seemed despised; but when he sought the mountain they shine again with a new whiteness. Because now indeed we are the sons of God, but it hath not yet appeared what we shall be. When therefore he shall appear, we shall be like to him, because we shall see him as he is (I Joan. III). Whence it is subjoined.

VERS. 3.-- And there appeared, etc. Moses, a holy man dead, and Elias, caught up alive into heaven, seen in majesty with the Lord (as Luke says), signify the glory of all the saints to come in him: who at the time of judgment shall be found either alive in the flesh or dead.

Elias with. (BEDA.) The lawgiver and the chief of the prophets appear: they speak with the Lord living in the flesh, 213Bshowing that he is the one whom the law and the prophets promised; not in the lowest places, but on the mountain with him, because they who pass beyond earthly desires in mind perceive that the majesty of Holy Scripture, which has been fulfilled in the Lord, is unfolded.

VERS. 4.-- Rabbi. Although astonished, etc., as far as having one tabernacle, that is, the Church of God. It is good. Much better therefore is it to be among the choirs of the saints, and to enjoy the vision of the Godhead: if the humanity of Christ transfigured so delights, and the company of two shown for a moment.

VERS. 6.-- A cloud overshadowing. Whence, because he sought a material tabernacle, he received the shade of a cloud, that he might learn that in the resurrection the saints are to be protected, not by the covering of houses, but by the Holy Spirit. 213CThis is. As if he said: This is truly he whom that Moses promised you, etc., as far as and it shall be enlightened by the same grace, and shall be protected for ever.

VERS. 7.-- And immediately. (BEDA.) When the voice came over the Son of man, he alone was found. Because when he shall have manifested himself to the elect, God will be all in all: nay rather, he himself with his own, one Christ throughout all, that is, the head with the body, shall shine forth; whence: No man hath ascended into heaven, but he that descended from heaven, the Son of man, who is in heaven (Joan. III).

VERS. 8.-- He charged them. He wills not that the glory of the kingdom to come and of the triumph which he had shown on the mountain be publicly preached: lest both it should be past belief for its greatness, and, after so great a glory, the cross that followed should make a scandal among untaught minds.

213DVERS. 9.-- They kept the word. (HIER.) That is, when death shall have been swallowed up in victory, the former things shall not be in memory, when the Lord shall have taken away the filth of the daughter of Sion, wiping away every tear from the eyes of the saints.

VERS. 10.-- What then. The scribes hand down, according to Malachy, that Elias shall come before the coming of the Saviour, and shall bring back the hearts of the fathers to their fathers, and shall restore all things to their ancient state. The disciples therefore judge this to be the glory of his coming which they had seen on the mountain, and they say: If thou hast already come in glory, why does thy forerunner not appear? especially because they see that Elias has withdrawn.

VERS. 11.-- He shall restore, etc. That is, he shall turn the heart 214Aof the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to the fathers. For he shall restore to death what he owes and what by living long he has withheld; whence he adds: How it is written. As if he said: As the prophets wrote in many ways of the passion of Christ, so also Elias is to suffer many things. He shall therefore restore all things. First, the hearts of the men of that time, to believe in Christ and to resist Antichrist. Then, he shall lay down his life for Christ.

VERS. 13.-- A great crowd. (HIER.) There is no rest under the sun: envy always slays the little ones, lightnings strike the great mountains; some learning with faith, others envying with pride, come to the Church. Questioning. (BEDA.) What they question about the Evangelist does not say, but it may be understood that a question had been raised about this: why the disciples could not free the demoniac 214Bwho was in their midst: for this can be gathered from what follows.

VERS. 15.-- And he asked. (ID.) Note that the places agree with the things. On the mountain he prays, is transformed, opens to the disciples the secrets of his majesty, in the low place he is received by the crowd, and is beaten upon by the weeping of the wretched. Above he unlocks to the disciples the mysteries of the kingdom, below he upbraids the crowds with the sins of unbelief. Above he lays open the voice of the Father to those who were able to hear, below he drives out evil spirits. Now, according to the quality of their merits, he ceases not to ascend for some and to descend for others. And he asked. (HIER.) He knows, and he asks, that confession may bring forth salvation, and that the murmur of our heart may first be loosed in words, as it is: Tell thy iniquities first, that thou mayest be justified.

VERS. 17.-- And I spoke to the disciples. Secretly he turns the blame 214Caside upon the disciples, whereas often the cure is hindered by the fault, not of those who heal, but of those to be healed.

VERS. 18.-- O generation. He is angry not with the man, but with the vice. He says this not out of weariness of feeling, but as a physician to a sick man who acts against his orders. And through one he convicts the Jews of unbelief.

VERS. 19.-- Immediately the spirit. Because while, after sin, we will to be converted to the Lord, we are the more assailed by the devil, that he may either shake out our virtue, or avenge his own expulsion.

VERS. 20.-- From his infancy. (HIER.) It signifies the Gentile people, in whom from birth the worship of idols grew, so that it foolishly sacrificed its own sons to demons; whence there follows:

VERS. 21.-- And oftentimes he, etc. For some 214Dworshipped fire, others water. Help. (HIER.) Our belief, like a beaked tongue, is weak, unless it lean upon the help of God. Faith with tears obtains the prayers it desired, as it is: Be it done to thee according to thy faith (Matth. XV).

VERS. 25.-- Tearing him, etc. (HIER.) The devil tears those who draw near to salvation, which is his beloved food, whom he desires to drag into his own belly by terrors and by losses, as in Job: He was made, etc. (ISID., RAB.) etc. For to the healed it is said: For you are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God (Col. III). Whence the infirmity of Christians is not death, but the likeness of death.

VERS. 28.-- This kind by nothing. (HIER.) Folly 215Abelongs to the luxury of the flesh, and is healed by fasting. Anger and sloth are driven off by prayer. The medicine of each wound must be applied to it. What heals the heel does not heal the eye; by fasting the passions of the body, by prayer the plagues of the mind, are healed.

VERS. 30.-- They shall kill him, etc. He mingles sad things with prosperous, that when they come they may not be borne with unprepared minds. If it saddens them that he is to be killed, it ought to gladden them that on the third day he is to rise again.

VERS. 31.-- They knew not. Not so much from slowness of wit as from love: because they had known him to be true God, they could not believe that he would die. And because they were accustomed to speak to them in figures, shuddering at his death, they thought that in these things also he spoke figuratively.

VERS. 32.-- Capharnaum. (HIER.) The village of consolation: 215Bit agrees with the foregoing sentence: Being slain, on the third day he shall rise again (Joan. XII). The grain of wheat dies, that it may be gathered more manifoldly: if it does not die, it remains alone. What in the way, etc. In the way they were treating of the primacy: a treating suited to the place. For a princedom is entered by force, and so is forsaken, and while it is held it slips away: and it is uncertain in what lodging, that is, on what day, it shall be ended; whence he says: He that will be first, etc.

VERS. 33.-- They had disputed among themselves. (BEDA.) Hence the dispute seems to have arisen, because they had seen Peter and James and John led apart into the mountain, and that some secret had there been entrusted to them; and to Peter also, as Matthew says, the keys of the kingdom of heaven promised, and the Church to be built upon the rock of faith, from which he himself received his name. They thought therefore 215Ceither that those three were set before the rest, or that Peter was set before them all.

VERS. 34.-- And sitting down, etc. They as they went were disputing about the primacy, and he, sitting, teaches humility. For princes toil, the humble are at rest. He wills to heal the desire of glory by humility, and first admonishes by a simple command, then by the example of a child's innocence.

VERS. 35.-- Having embraced him. He signifies that the humble are worthy of his embrace, who can rightly glory and say: His left hand is under my head, and his right hand shall embrace me (Cant. II).

VERS. 36.-- Whosoever shall receive one. Either he shows simply that the poor of Christ are to be received by those who would be greater, for 215Dhis honour. Or he persuades them to be themselves little ones in malice, that they may be simple as little ones. And whosoever. Because he was teaching that he is received in the children, as the head in the members, lest this only should be thought to be what appeared, he added: And whosoever shall receive me, etc.

VERS. 37.-- He answered him. Because he had said: Whosoever shall receive one of such children, receiveth me, [Vulg. Mark 9:36 reads receperit in nomine meo, "shall receive in my name"] John understands that they who do not walk sincerely do not receive them in his name; whence he says: Master, we saw a certain man. As if he said: This man ought not to be received in thy name. And we forbade him. He thought that one who does not use the office was to be shut out from the benefit; but he is taught that no one is to be barred from the good which he has in 216Apart, but rather to be urged on to that which he has not: whence: Forbid him not.

VERS. 38.-- Forbid him not. (BEDA.) Hence the Apostle: But whether by occasion or by truth Christ be preached, etc., as far as we ought to detest and to forbid.

VERS. 41.-- And whosoever shall scandalize. Although this be general, yet according to the sequence of the discourse it can be said against the apostles, who were disputing about the primacy and could destroy by their own example those whom they were calling to the faith. (BEDA.) Note that in our good work the scandal of a neighbour is sometimes to be guarded against, sometimes to be counted as nothing: in so far as we can without sin, we ought to avoid the scandal of our neighbours. But if scandal is taken for the sake of truth, 216Bit is more useful that it be suffered to arise than that the truth be forsaken.

An ass's millstone. (HIER.) According to the custom of the province, etc., as far as a more tolerable punishment of hell would in any case torment him.

VERS. 42.-- And if it shall scandalize thee. Because above he taught that we should not scandalize those who believe in him, he admonishes how much we ought to beware of those who scandalize. Σκάνδαλον in Greek is a stumbling-block, or a fall, or the striking of the foot. Or, as others say, a sharp stone. He therefore scandalizes his brother who by word or by deed affords him occasion of falling. Thy hand. A friend, of whose help and counsel we have need daily. But if he should be willing to wound us in the cause of the soul, he must be shut out from our fellowship, lest, if we will to have part with a lost man in this life, 216Cwe perish together with him.

Than having two hands. (HIER.) The two hands of princedom are humility and pride. Cut off pride; hold a humble princedom.

VERS. 43.-- Where the worm. (BEDA.) The stench of worms comes of the corruption of flesh and of blood; and therefore fresh meat is seasoned with salt, so that, the bloody humour being dried out, there can be no worm. Flesh therefore and blood breed worms, because carnal delight, which the seasoning of continence does not withstand, begets eternal punishment for the lustful. We ought therefore to chastise the body with the salt of continence, and the mind with the seasoning of wisdom, from the stain of error and of vices.

VERS. 48.-- For every one shall be salted with fire. Because for the third time he made mention of fire and of the worm, he shows how we may be able to avoid 216Dboth. For every one with fire, it is wondrously said: for what is salted with salt keeps off the rottenness of the worm. But what is salted with fire, that is, in fire, when salt has been sprinkled upon it, consumes the flesh as well. These things were done according to the law in the victims that were burned upon the altar, where it was commanded that salt be offered in every victim and sacrifice. Every victim shall be salted with salt. For he is truly a victim of the Lord who [offers] body and soul, etc., as far as to deny those dear and near to us. Every victim shall be salted with salt. (HIER.) The victim is the human race, which here is salted with the salt of wisdom or of reason, while the corruption of blood, the keeper of rottenness and the mother of worms, is here consumed, and afterwards shall be tried by the fire of purgatory.

217AVERS. 49.-- But if the salt, etc. That is, if a man once refreshed with the seasonings of truth return to apostasy: by what other teacher is he corrected, who has spat out the wisdom he tasted, either terrified by adversities or enticed by prosperity? Whence: Who shall heal a charmer struck by a serpent? (Eccli. XII.) [Vulg. Eccli. 12:13 reads miserebitur, "shall have pity on"] In this it is believed that Judas and his fellows are signified, who, corrupted by love of money, did not hesitate both to lose his apostleship and to betray the Lord. But because there are many whom, while greater knowledge lifts them up, it severs from the fellowship of others, and the more they savour, the more they lose their savour of the virtue of concord. He subjoins: Have salt in you, and peace. (BEDA.) To have salt without peace is not the gift of virtue, but a proof of damnation. For the better a man savours, the worse he offends.

• 217B

VERS. 1.-- And rising up from thence. Thus far the things which he did and taught in Galilee: from here he relates what he did in Judea, and taught, and suffered. And first the things beyond the Jordan toward the east: then those on this side of the Jordan, when he came to Jericho, and to Bethany, and to Jerusalem. For although the whole province of the Jews is generally called Judea, to distinguish it from the other nations, yet more particularly the southern tract is called Judea, to distinguish it from Galilee, from the Decapolis, and from the other regions in the same province.

VERS. 2.-- The Pharisees asked. Great is the distance between the crowds and the Pharisees. These come together that they may be taught, and that the sick may be healed, as Matthew 217Cplainly says: those, that by tempting they may deceive. For the devotion of piety brings these: the goad of spite leads those. Whether it is lawful for a man to put away his wife. (BEDA.) He tempted him with a horned syllogism, etc., as far as but it was granted because of the necessity of those who sin.

VERS. 5.-- For the hardness of heart. (ID.) Is God contrary to himself, etc., as far as that the bond of wedlock should persevere through hatreds and murders.

VERS. 8.-- And they shall be, etc. The reward of marriage is that of two there be made one flesh. Chastity joined to the spirit is made one spirit.

VERS. 9.-- Let not man put asunder. By the desire of a second wife. God separates: he who joins, when by the consent of both, for the service of God (in that the time is short), they so have wives as though not having them.

217DVERS. 10.-- And in the house, etc. (HIER.) It was not the disciples who asked first, etc., as far as that bread may strengthen the heart of man, as it is: If any man will come after me (Luc. IX), etc.

VERS. 11.-- Whosoever shall put away his wife. (BEDA.) Matthew more fully: Whosoever shall put away his wife, save for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery (Matth. V). There is therefore one carnal cause only, fornication: one spiritual, the fear of God, that a wife be put away, as many are read to have done for religion's sake. But no cause is prescribed by the law of God, that another be married while she lives who has been left.

VERS. 13.-- But the disciples rebuked them that brought them. Not because they were unwilling that these should be blessed by the Saviour's 218Ahand and voice, but, not yet having full faith, they thought that after the manner of men he was wearied by the importunity of those who brought them.

VERS. 14.-- For of such is the kingdom of God. He says "of such" with meaning, not "of these." As if he said: Manners reign, not age. The kingdom of heaven is promised to those who have the like simplicity and innocence, to whom that word to the apostles is fitting: Be not made little ones in understanding, but in malice be little ones (I Cor. XIV) [Vulg. 1 Cor. 14:20 nolite pueri effici sensibus, "be not children in understanding"].

VERS. 15.-- Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom. He who does not persevere in anger, who when hurt does not remember it, who seeing a fair woman does not covet, who has not one thing in his mouth and another in his heart. As if he said: If you shall not be such, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of God. That is, 218Bwe are bidden to receive the teaching of the Gospel as little ones do, that is, as a little one does not contradict his teachers, does not frame arguments against them, but faithfully receives, obeys with fear and is quiet: so we also, obeying simply and without any contradiction, ought to receive the words of the Lord.

VERS. 17.-- A certain man running up, on bended knee. (BEDA.) He had heard, I believe, from the Lord that only those who wish to be like little ones are worthy of entrance into the heavenly kingdom, and therefore he desires to be more certain, not through parables but openly: by what merits of works he might be able to obtain eternal life.

VERS. 18.-- Why callest thou me good. (ID.) Because he had called him good master, etc., as far as but he testifies that apart from God there is no good.

218CVERS. 19.-- Thou shalt not commit adultery. (ID.) This is the chastity of childlike innocence, which is set before us to be imitated, if we would enter the kingdom of God. And it is to be well noted that the justice of the law, kept in its own time, conferred not only temporal goods but also eternal life.

VERS. 20.-- Master. (ID.) He is not to be thought [to have asked] with the intent of one tempting, etc., as far as whence he adds: Go, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor (Matth. V), etc.

VERS. 21.-- And come, follow me. (ID.) As if he said: After riches have been despised, imitate the Saviour, that is, evils being left behind, do good things. A money-bag is more easily despised than concupiscence or pleasure.

VERS. 23.-- How hardly. (ID.) They who apply themselves to the multiplying of riches, etc., as far as they may be able to enter 218Dthe kingdom of God.

VERS. 25.-- It is easier for a camel. How then in the Gospel did Matthew and Zacchaeus, and Joseph, and in the Old Testament very many rich men enter in? Perhaps because they held riches for nothing, or learned to despise them altogether, whence David: I am alone and poor (Psal. XXIV). And the same: If riches abound, set not your heart upon them (Ibid. LXI). He does not say, Do not receive them.

VERS. 26.-- And who can be saved. Since there are more poor than rich, they would not have said this unless they had understood in the number of the rich all who would wish to obtain riches.

VERS. 27.-- With God. Who is able to turn men from the greed of earthly things 219Ato the love of eternal things, and to make the proud humble.

VERS. 28.-- Behold, we have left all. Great confidence: he was a fisherman, he was not rich, he sought his living by hand and craft, and yet he says confidently: Behold, we have forsaken all things. And we have followed. Because it is not enough so to leave, he joins that which is perfect, and we have followed thee. As if he said: We have done what thou didst command: what reward therefore wilt thou give?

VERS. 30.-- A hundredfold. (BEDA.) On this occasion certain men lay down as doctrine the Jewish fable of the thousand years after the resurrection of the just, etc., as far as they enjoy the most true love of the heavenly fatherland, which is signified by the right hand, and of all the elect alike.

VERS. 31.-- But many. Because many begin but do not finish, a terrible sentence is subjoined: 219BBut many, etc. The thief on the cross, a confessor on the same day on which he was crucified for his own sins, by the grace of faith rejoices with Christ in paradise. Daily also we see many laymen excel rather by the merits of their life, and others, fervent from their earliest age in spiritual study, grow torpid at the last in idleness.

VERS. 32.-- And they were astonished. For this reason, namely, because they remembered that he had foretold that he should suffer many things from the chief priests and the scribes, and be slain. They feared therefore lest either they themselves should be slain with him, or he, in whose life and teaching they rejoiced, should be slain.

And they shall take. (BEDA.) Foreseeing that the minds of the disciples would be troubled by his passion, etc., as far as he approaches the place of death as one undaunted.

219CVERS. 35.-- And they come. Having heard of the resurrection, forgetful of the second coming, they think that he will reign after the manner of men. Matthew says that the mother made the request, but Mark says that they themselves did, wishing to lay open the desire of those by whose counsel the mother asked.

VERS. 38.-- Or with the baptism. The same as the cup. Whence elsewhere he says of his passion: I have a baptism wherewith to be baptized: and how am I straitened until it be accomplished.

VERS. 39.-- The cup indeed. (BED.) James is beheaded by Herod, John is cast into a cauldron of boiling oil. Thence the athlete of Christ went forth to the crown of martyrdom, and was at once banished to Patmos. And so he both was not wanting to martyrdom in mind, and drank the cup of confession which the three children drank in the furnace, although the persecutor did not shed his blood.

219DVERS. 40.-- But to sit. As if to say, Do you wish that I should grant this to you? But the kingdom of heaven is not the giver's but the receiver's. For there is no respect of persons with God (Act. X), but whosoever shall be worthy shall receive that which is prepared not for the person but for the life. To you. Still proud, as if he said: If you wish to receive, be not what you are: it is prepared for others, and be you others, and it is prepared for you, which is, be humbled first, you who already wish to be exalted.

VERS. 41.-- They were indignant. Not about the mother, but about the sons, who, not knowing their own measure, burned with immoderate greed.

VERS. 42.-- But Jesus calling them. A humble master, and kind and gentle, he neither reproves the two for immoderate greed 220Anor rebukes the ten for indignation and spite, but teaches that he is the greater who shall have been the less, and lord who is servant. In vain therefore do either those sigh after greater things or these grieve over their desire, since not power but humility leads to the summit of the virtues. Lastly he sets before his own an example, that if they made light of words, they might blush at deeds. For the Son of man also, etc.

VERS. 46.-- And they come to Jericho. (HIER.) Jericho is moon or anathema, which agrees with him drawing near to the passion. The failing of Christ's flesh is the preparation of the heavenly Jerusalem, whence, forsaking Jericho, they draw near to Jerusalem, that is, to the vision of peace. And as he went forth. (BEDA.) Because, the Lord ascending into the heavens and the faithful following, etc., as far as and he scattered them into the world for 220Bthe enlightening of all peoples. Blind Bartimaeus. (HIER.) The blindness of the Jews, which shall be enlightened at the end at the coming of Elias and Enoch.

VERS. 47.-- Who when he had heard. The people of the Gentiles, having heard the fame of Christ, of whom it sought to be made partaker, many contradicted, first the Jews and afterwards the Gentiles also, lest the world, which was to be enlightened and healed, should call upon Christ, nor yet could the fury of those who assailed it hinder those foreordained to eternal life.

Son of David. (HIER.) Through the merits of the patriarchs the Jewish people is enlightened, to whom God is present, merciful and compassionate, enlightening the blind and raising up them that are cast down.

VERS. 48.-- But he much the more. As the war of vices grows heavier, hands must be lifted up to the stone of help 220Cwith a cry, that is, to Jesus.

(HIER.) A fitting order of salvation, etc., as far as beholding the apostles on high.

VERS. 49.-- And they call the blind man. (BEDA.) Allegorically, the Lord calls the blind man crying out, while to the people of the Gentiles, desiring the knowledge of the truth, he commits the word of faith by holy preachers. These, calling the blind man, bid him be of better courage and rise and come to him, when by preaching they command him to have hope of salvation, to rise from the torpor of vices, and to gird himself to those pursuits of the virtues by which he may deserve to be enlightened, as if he said: Come ye to him and be enlightened (Psal. XXXIII). And, rise thou that sleepest (Ephes. V), etc.

VERS. 50.-- Who, casting away his garment. That is, 220Dthe cares of the world being cast off, with the step of his mind unhindered he hastens to the giver of light. Leaping up. He rewards a ready will with the fulfilling of its desire, whence: Whatsoever you shall ask in prayer, believing, you shall receive.

VERS. 51.-- Rabboni, and let me see. He does not seek gold, but light. For a blind man can have riches, but he does not see what he has. By his example let us seek not false riches, but the light which we can see with the angels alone, to which the way is faith. Whence it is said to the blind man when enlightened: Go, thy faith hath made thee whole.

VERS. 52.-- He saw and followed. (BEDA.) He sees and follows who does that which he well understands. To follow is to imitate. Whence: If any man minister to me, let him follow me (Joan. XII).

221AIn the way. Let us consider by what way he walks, and let us follow through humility, through labours. The way which says: I am the way, the truth and the life (Joan. XIV). This is the narrow way which leads to the steep places, of Jerusalem and of Bethany to the mount of Olives, which is the mount of light and of consolation.

VERS. 1.-- Of Bethany. (BEDA.) Bethany is a village or city on the side of Mount Olivet, etc., as far as two, for the knowledge of the truth and the cleanness of the work. Two of the disciples. (HIER.) Two by two they are called, two by two they are sent, etc., as far as they may know the Lord between the two cherubim, singing with the spirit, with the mind.

VERS. 2.-- And straightway. (BEDA.) The preachers, entering the world, found the people of the nations, etc., 221Bas far as but that which is clean and holy belongs to God alone.

VERS. 4.-- A colt tied. (HIER.) The colt tied and untamed, which they loose and tame, is the Gentile people. Before the door of faith it stands with the bonds of its own sins where two ways meet: in the freedom of choice it wavers between death and life.

VERS. 6.-- And they let them go. (BEDA.) They who at the loosing spoke against it, etc., as far as they cover them with that whereby, with Christ as their rider, they may be made worthy.

VERS. 7.-- And he sat. (HIER.) He began to reign, that sin might not reign in mortal or in wanton flesh: but justice and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.

VERS. 8.-- But many spread their garments. Because many martyrs, stripping themselves of the covering of their own flesh, prepare a way with their blood for the simpler sort, 221Cthat these may go unhindered to the city on high, to which Jesus leads.

(HIER.) Many, etc. The feet are the outermost members, which the Apostle appointed for the joining together, which, although they are not the back on which the Lord sat, yet are instructed along with the soldiers by John.

And others. (ID.) The just shall flourish as the palm tree, narrow in the roots, broad in flowers and fruits: since they are the good odour of Christ, and they strew the way of the commandments of God with good report. (BEDA.) And others cut down leaves or branches from the trees, who in the teaching of the truth cull out the words and sentences of the Fathers from their books. And these they lay down in the way of God, by humble preaching, before the mind of the hearer as he comes.

VERS. 9.-- And they that went before. The Jewish 221Dpeople went before, the Gentile followed. And because all who are or have been faithful believed and believe in Christ, both they who go before and they who follow cry hosanna: which in Latin is rendered, Save us: for from him also all the former sought salvation.

VERS. 10.-- Blessed is he that cometh. Since there is one faith, one hope of all. They looked for him and believed that he would come, and we believe that he has come.

(BEDA.) By this which is joined to it: hosanna in the highest: which is salvation, it signifies that the coming of Christ is the salvation not of men only, but of the whole world, joining earthly things to heavenly, that to him every knee should bow, of those that are in heaven, on earth and under the earth (Philip. II).

(HIER.) This is in accord with Gabriel: who says: He shall be 222Agreat, and shall be called the Son of the Most High, etc., as far as through the word itself of entreaty.

VERS. 11.-- And he entered in. (ID.) Now, the passion drawing near, he wills to be in the place appointed for the passion before the ages, etc., as far as he has already begun the sacrament of the blessed immolation.

Into the temple. He gave us an example, that wheresoever we should come, we should first turn aside to the house of prayer if there be one there: and when by the practice of prayer we have commended ourselves to God, we should withdraw to do those things for which we came. And having looked about, etc. He did this not once, but through all the five days. By day he taught in the temple, by night, going out, he abode on Mount Olivet, as Luke says. For by teaching he diligently bestowed on the unbelieving the office of correction, by abiding 222Bamong the faithful he graciously showed forth the grace of kindness.

And when he had seen. (BEDA.) As he speaks by parables, so he does, etc., as far as by working miracles, and he found none: therefore he condemned it.

VERS. 14.-- Now no more. (ID.) Thou also, if thou wilt not hear in the judgment from Christ, Depart from me, ye evil ones, into everlasting fire, for I was hungry and you gave not to me, to eat (Matth. XXV) [Vulg. Matt. 25:41 maledicti, "ye cursed"], beware to be a barren tree, but rather offer to Christ, poor and hungry, the fruit of piety which he lacks.

VERS. 15.-- He began to cast out. In the thing itself he shows what he did by a figure in the fig tree. For the fig tree did not sin if before the time it had no fruit, but the priests did.

Them that sold. (BEDA.) Those things, namely, which they who came from 222Cafar bought from the natives to be offered, etc., as far as they are always deprived of the priesthood.

VERS. 16.-- And he suffered not. He sends before an example of the judgment to come, when he drives all the reprobate from the Church: and lest they enter any more to trouble her, he restrains them with an everlasting scourging.

But you have made. For to this end were they in the temple, that they might either bodily persecute those who did not give, or spiritually slay those who did give. The temple and house of God is the mind and conscience of the faithful, which in the hurting of a neighbour brings forth perverse thoughts, as robbers sit in a den, and slay those who walk in simplicity: and so the mind is now not the house of God, but a den of thieves.

VERS. 20.-- Withered away. (BEDA.) The fig tree was withered from 222Dthe roots, that it might be shown that the impious nation was not to be chastised for a time, or in part, by the inroads of foreigners, and to be set free through penance, as has often been done, but to be smitten with an entire and everlasting damnation. Otherwise. It was withered from the roots, that it might be shown to be utterly forsaken not only of human favour from without, but of divine favour within: for it lost both life in heaven and country on earth.

VERS. 21.-- Peter remembering. Peter acknowledges the tree withered, and the root cut off, to which succeeds the most beautiful fruitful olive, so called by the Lord. Whence there follows: Amen, I say to you, etc.

VERS. 23.-- Whosoever shall say. (BEDA.) Certain men are wont to say that our own had not yet full faith, 223Aetc., as far as by how much he groans that he has been cast out from the hurting of the godly. (HIER.) But this was done: when the apostles said: Worthily are we transferred to the Gentiles, because you judge yourselves unworthy (Matth. XXI). (BEDA.) The distinction of those who pray is to be noted, etc., as far as if yet they first forgive those who sin against them.

VERS. 25.-- And when you shall stand. (HIER.) Mark after his manner comprises the seven petitions of the Lord's Prayer in one prayer. For he to whom all things are forgiven, what more shall he ask, save that he persevere in that which he has obtained?

VERS. 28.-- By what authority. They doubt of the power of God, and wish it to be understood underneath that what he does is the devil's.

VERS. 29.-- I will ask. He could have confuted the calumny of the tempters by an open answer: but he prudently 223Basks, that they may be condemned either by their own silence or by their own sentence.

VERS. 31.-- If we shall say. (HIER.) By the lamp of the world they are darkened, whence he says: I have prepared a lamp for my Christ: his enemies I will clothe with confusion (Psal. CXXXI).

Why then, etc. As if he said: He whom you confess to have had his prophecy from heaven bore witness to me, and from him you have heard by what authority I do these things.

VERS. 32.-- If we shall say. Whichever of these they answer: they see that they will fall into a snare, they fear stoning: but more the confession of the truth.

VERS. 33.-- Neither do I tell you. (BED.) For two causes the knowledge of the truth is hidden from those who seek it, when either he to whom he seeks understands too little, or by hatred or by contempt of the truth he is unworthy that it should be opened to him. 223CFor the one it is said: I have yet many things to say to you, which you cannot bear now. [Vulg. Jo. 16:12 sed non potestis portare modo, "but you cannot bear them now"] For the other, Give not that which is holy to dogs.

VERS. 1.-- A vat, that is, a winepress or an altar, or those winepresses by whose title certain psalms are inscribed. Having gone into a far country. Giving free choice of working, not by a change of place, because God is everywhere, and fills all things.

VERS. 6.-- Because they will reverence. He said this not in ignorance, because he knows all things, but God is always said to be in doubt, that free will may be reserved to man.

(BEDA.) We put the question to Arius and Eunomius, behold, the father is said to be ignorant, and he tempers his sentence, and, so far as is in us, he is said to have lied. Whatever 223Dthey shall answer for the father, let them understand the same for the Son, who says that he does not know the day of the consummation.

VERS. 7.-- But the husbandmen. (ID.) He proves that the princes of the Jews crucified Christ not through ignorance, etc., as far as and they strove to prefer their own justice which is of the law.

VERS. 8.-- And they cast him out. He marks their obstinacy: who, not even with the Lord crucified and raised again, were willing to believe at the preaching of the apostles, but cast him forth like a worthless corpse: because, so far as in them lay, shutting him out from their own borders they gave him to the Gentiles to be received.

(BEDA.) To whichever of the faithful the mystery of baptism, etc., as far as he will rejoice to crucify the Lord and to hold him up for a show.

224AVERS. 10.-- The stone which they rejected. (HIER.) The rejected stone, which the corner bore, joining at the supper the lamb with the bread, ending the Old and beginning the New Testament, this shows forth wonders in our eyes.

VERS. 13.-- And they send to him. (BEDA.) They feared the crowd, and what they could not do of themselves, etc., as far as they would rather lose both the kingdom and all things than be tributaries.

VERS. 14.-- Master, we know. (ID.) The smooth and deceitful question provokes him who answers to this, that he should fear God rather than Caesar, and should say that tributes ought not to be paid, so that the Herodians, hearing it, might hold him the author of sedition against the Romans.

VERS. 15.-- Who knowing their craftiness. Let those who think that the Saviour's questioning is ignorance and not dispensation 224Blearn from this place that he could know whose image it was. But he asks, that he may fittingly answer their speech. A penny. The denarius is a kind of coin which is reckoned for ten coins, and it has the image of Caesar.

VERS. 17.-- Render therefore the things that are Caesar's. This he himself did: paying tribute for himself and for Peter. The things that are God's, to God. This also he did, fulfilling the will of the Father. Otherwise: Render the things that are Caesar's to Caesar. The impress of his own image. The things that are God's, to God. The soul enlightened by the light of his countenance, Whence: The light of thy countenance is signed upon us (Psal. IV), etc.

VERS. 18.-- The Sadducees, etc. There were two heresies among the Jews, that of the Pharisees and that of the Sadducees. The Pharisees set forth the justice of traditions and observances (which they 224Ccall δευτερώσεις): whence they are also called the divided, apart from the people. But the Sadducees, that is, the just, denied the resurrection both of the body and of the soul.

The Sadducees, etc. (BEDA.) They who deny that there is a resurrection of bodies, or who do not believe it, judging that souls perish together with the bodies; rightly do they frame a fable of this kind, which may convict of raving those who assert the resurrection of bodies. But this could also have befallen at some time in their own nation.

VERS. 20.-- Seven therefore, etc. (ID.) They set against him the baseness of a fable, that they may deny the resurrection. But mystically, the seven brothers dead without children agree with all the reprobate: who through their whole life (which is rolled round in seven days) are barren of good work, and when these die one by one, at the last the very worldly 224Dconversation dies also, that is, passes away, like a barren wife, whom they wore out without the fruit of a good work. HIER. The barren woman, leaving no seed from the seven brothers, etc., as far as because the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

VERS. 25.-- Neither shall they marry, neither, etc. (BEDA.) The Latin usage does not answer to the Greek idiom: for it is properly of women that marrying is said: and of men, the taking of a wife. But let us understand it as simply said, neither shall they marry, the men, neither shall they be married, the women.

VERS. 26.-- I am the God, etc. (BED.) Although he could bring forward many plainer testimonies concerning the resurrection, etc., as far as the things which, whether good or evil, they wrought together with their souls.

225AVERS. 28.-- He asked him. (HIER.) What does this question mean, since all who are skilled in the law know it? But the commandments are ordered differently in Exodus and in Leviticus and in Deuteronomy. For our infancy is nourished from these two breasts raised upon the bosom of the bride.

The first of all, etc. The greatest thing, which before all we ought to set in the heart as the one foundation of piety, is this, namely, the knowledge and confession of the divine unity together with the carrying out of the divine working, which is perfected in the love of God and of the neighbour: this is the faith which worketh by love.

VERS. 32.-- Well, master. (BEDA.) The scribe shows in this answer that a weighty question had long been debated among the scribes and the Pharisees, etc., as far as but no one without faith and love, in which judgment this 225Bscribe declares himself to have been.

VERS. 34.-- Thou art not far from the kingdom of God, etc. (ISID.) Although he had come to tempt: for ignorance is farther off than knowledge, as it is said to the Sadducees: You err, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God (Matth. XXII). (BEDA.) Matthew says that he asked by way of tempting, etc., as far as according to that word: He that believeth easily is light of heart, and shall be made less (Eccl. XIX).

And no man. Because they are confuted in words, they question him no more; but, having openly seized him, they deliver him to the Roman power, whence it appears that the poisons of envy can be overcome, but hardly be quiet.

VERS. 36.-- Sit on my right hand. For in this he shows the weakness [infirmitatem; read non infirmitatem, "not the weakness"] of the Son, but that the one works in the other. For the Son both subjects his enemies to the Father, and glorifies God the Father 225Cupon earth.

VERS. 38.-- Beware. (BEDA.) Note that he does not forbid those who are of this office, etc., as far as we be led astray by their pretence, or be inflamed by emulation to the same.

VERS. 40.-- Who devour the houses of widows. As men who are to be patrons in the judgment, they do not hesitate to take money from the weak and from those troubled by the conscience of their sins: whereas it is the hand stretched out to give, and not closed to receive, that commends prayer to God: to whom that word is fitting: Let his prayer be turned to sin.

VERS. 41.-- The treasury. (BEDA.) Φυλάττειν in Greek, to keep in Latin. Gaza, in Persian, riches, Gazophylacium the place in which riches are kept, and the chest, namely, in which the offerings of the people were gathered for the uses of the temple. Whence in the book of Kings: Joiada the high priest took 225Done chest, and opened a hole in the top (IV Reg. XII), etc., and the porches in which they were kept. Whence: These words Jesus spoke in the treasury, teaching in the temple.

He beheld how. As he said that those who seek after primacy and vainglory are to be avoided, and foretold a more grievous judgment to those who pray in pretence, so also he discerns those who offer with a just examination, that he may render to each according to the heart and the works, which he does also today in the Church.

The rich. (BEDA.) The rich, the Jews puffed up over the justice of the law, etc., as far as they surpass all the works of the proud Jews.

VERS. 42.-- A poor widow. (HIER.) This poor little woman signifies me and such as me, who cast in what I can 226Aand desire what I cannot to expound to you. God desires not how much, but out of how much. Every one can offer a farthing. This is the twist of bread in Leviticus, which is a ready will. A farthing, because it consists of three, in thought, in word and in deed.

A farthing. Reckoners call a farthing the fourth part of any thing, namely, of place, of time, of money. Perhaps therefore here it signifies the fourth part of a sicle, that is, five oboli.

VERS. 44.-- For all. (BEDA.) The Jew casts into the gifts out of that which abounds to him, etc., as far as My God, his mercy shall prevent me (Psal. LVIII).

VERS. 1.-- And as he was going out. (BEDA.) They shall withdraw from the temple, the Lord, etc., as far as it was to pay the penalty, and 226Bthe buildings to fall in ruin.

Seest thou these, etc. But it was divinely provided that, when the grace of the evangelical faith had been laid open throughout the world, the temple itself with its ceremonies should be taken away: lest perchance one still a little child, and a suckling in the faith, if he saw those things abide which were made by the prophets and instituted by the Lord, in admiring a worldly holy thing, should slip back little by little into Judaism. The shadow therefore is taken away, and the truth, declared throughout the world, holds the palm.

(HIER.) He foretells the calamity of the last time, that is, the destruction of the temple together with its people and its letter. Of which: There shall not be left a stone upon a stone (Luc. XXI): that is, the testimonies of the prophets upon those against whom the Jews turned them back, as upon Esdras, upon Zorobabel, upon the Machabees.

226CVERS. 3.-- And when, etc. (BED.) He abides quiet among the saints: while he detests the madness of the proud. For the Mount of Olives signifies the fruitful loftiness of the Church: that mountain brings forth not unfruitful trees, but olive groves, by which light is fed, rest is granted to the weary, weakness is loosed.

VERS. 5.-- And answering. (ID.) From the time of the Lord's passion, among the people of the Jews who chose the seditious robber and cast away Christ the Saviour, neither the wars of enemies nor the seditions of citizens have ceased; but the apostles are warned not to be terrified at the coming of these things, and not to forsake Jerusalem and Judea, because the end is not at once. For to the fortieth year was deferred the desolation of the province and the last destruction of the city and of the temple.

226DVERS. 6.-- For many shall come. When the destruction was at hand, many came who would falsely claim that they were Christs, and that the time of liberty was already at hand. Many also in the Church, in the times of the apostles, threatened among other things that the day of the Lord was pressing on. Many antichrists came in the name of Christ, of whom the first was Simon Magus, to whom all who were in Samaria gave ear from the least to the greatest, saying: This is the power of God which is called great: because for a long time he had bewitched them with magic arts.

VERS. 8.-- For there shall rise. (BEDA.) All these things before the last and bitterest sorrows, etc., as far as who, fighting one against another, make the victory of the Church.

227AVERS. 9.-- But look to yourselves. (BEDA.) Why all these things are brought in, he says Look ye, etc. For this alone is the greatest cause of the destruction, that after the slaying of the Lord they harassed with impious cruelty the heralds likewise of his name and of the faith, and the confessors like him.

VERS. 10.-- And unto all nations. (ID.) Because the Lord knew that the hearts of the disciples were to be saddened at the perdition of their own nation, he comforts them in this manner, that they may know that, the Jews being lost, they will have companions of the heavenly kingdom out of the whole world. For as the ecclesiastical histories testify, long before the destruction of Judea all the apostles were scattered through the whole world to preach the Gospel, save James the son of Zebedee, and James the brother of the Lord, who first in Judea shed their blood for the word of the Gospel.

227BVERS. 14.-- But when you shall see, etc. (ID.) The abomination may be understood either as Antichrist, or as the image of Caesar which Pilate set in the temple, etc., as far as it was always obedient to the empire of the Romans.

VERS. 17.-- But woe to them that are with child, etc. Because, weighed down either by the burden of the womb or by the load of their children, they will not be able to flee. Whence in the book of Histories it is read that the wife of Jonathan, troubled in flight, took back her son, fallen from her bosom, lame for ever.

VERS. 21.-- And then if any man. (BED.) Some refer this to the Jewish captivity, when many, saying that they were Christs, drew the deceived people after them. But there was no faithful man there whom God might exhort not to follow perverse masters. All, both the besiegers and the besieged, being strangers to Christ, were hardened, 227Cwhence it is better to be taken of heretics, who, coming against the Church, falsely say that they are Christs: of whom the first was Simon Magus; the last, Antichrist.

VERS. 24.-- But in those days, etc. (ID.) The stars in the judgment shall be seen dark, etc., as far as then shall come to pass what the same prophet says elsewhere: And the light of the moon shall be as the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days (Isa. III).

VERS. 25.-- Falling down. From their light, when the seed of Abraham, to which the stars were likened, shall almost fail.

And the powers which, etc. (BEDA.) What wonder is it that men should tremble, when at the sight of the judgment the angelic powers tremble? Whence Job: The pillars of heaven tremble, and dread at his beck (Job. XXVI). And what does 227Dthe little rod of the desert suffer, where the cedar of paradise is shaken? They shall be moved. (HIER.) To the wrath of vengeance, when they shall be sent by the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power, who before came down in humility like rain upon a fleece.

VERS. 27.-- From the four winds. From the east and the west, the south, the north, and not only from these; but from the utmost part of the earth to the utmost part of heaven, that is, from the farthest bounds of the earth straight on to its last limits, where to those who look from afar the circle of heaven seems to rest upon the earth.

VERS. 28.-- But from the fig tree. As if he said, as when there are tender shoots upon the fig tree, and the bud breaks out into flower, you understand the coming of summer and of spring 228Aand of the west wind; so when you shall see these things which are written, think not that the end of the world is already at hand, but that they come as forerunners, to show that it is near.

(BEDA.) The fig tree is the Synagogue, which, because when the Lord came to her she had not the fruit of justice, etc., as far as and the summer of the true light and peace.

(HIER.) The parable of the fig tree, that is, the prophecy. The leaves that are born are the present words, but the summer near at hand is the day of judgment, in which every tree shall make manifest what it had within, whether dry, for the burning, or green, for the planting in Eden with the tree of life, whose leaves are unto the health of the nations, that is, the words in which it shall be said, Come, ye blessed of my Father, etc.

VERS. 31.-- Heaven and earth shall pass away. The airy heaven, from which are the birds of heaven and the clouds of heaven, whence Peter: 228BBut the heavens which now are, and the earth, by the same word are laid up in store and reserved unto fire (II Pet. III), plainly teaching that the heavens which are to perish by fire are other than those which were destroyed by water, that is, the empty and cloudy ones. For the water of the flood, which passed the tops of the mountains by fifteen cubits only, did not come beyond the borders of the air and of the ether. Ecclesiastes (Cap. I): One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth standeth for ever. So therefore heaven and earth pass away according to their image, they remain for ever according to their essence.

VERS. 32.-- Neither the Son. -- For in him are all the treasures of wisdom and of knowledge hidden. Therefore hidden, because it is not expedient for us to know, whence he says: It is not for you to know the times or the moments which the Father 228Chath put in his own power (Act. I). In which he shows that he knows, but that it is not expedient for the apostles to know, so that, being always uncertain of the coming of the judge, they may live daily as though they were to be judged on the morrow. The Son therefore knows for himself, but not for us, that we may always be watchful, whence: see ye, watch, etc.

(HILAR.) The Son and the Holy Ghost, because they are not of themselves, do not know of themselves concerning that day: but the Father, because he is of himself, knows of himself.

VERS. 34.-- And to the porter, etc. (HIER.) To him, namely, who preaches. To whom it is said: If thou declare not to the wicked man his iniquity, I will require his blood at thy hand (Ezech. III).

Watch ye therefore. The example of the father of the household being set before, why he keeps silence about the day of the consummation, he says: watch ye therefore. He who sleeps sees not bodies, but phantasms, 228Dand when he awakes he has nothing of those things which he had seen. Such are they whom the love of the world snatches away in life, and forsakes after life.

VERS. 36.-- And what I say to you. Not only the rulers of the Church, but all of us are bidden to watch, keeping the doors of our hearts; lest the evil suggestion of the ancient enemy steal in, lest the Lord find us sleeping, whence Paul: Watch, ye just, and sin not. [Vulg. 1 Cor. 15:34 Evigilate, "Awake"]

VERS. 1.-- Now it was the pasch. (HIER.) Pascha is interpreted a passing over, but phase an immolation, etc., as far as and armed with virtue let us eat, saying: For Christ our pasch is sacrificed (Matth. XXVI).

(BEDA.) Pascha, which in Hebrew is phase, from a passing over, 229Anot from suffering, etc., as far as it admonishes us, namely, to undertake the way of the virtues. And the chief priests sought. (HIER.) Iniquity went forth from the princes, who ought to have made ready the temple, and the vessels, and to have purified themselves according to the law for the eating of the lamb.

VERS. 2.-- Not on the festival day. (ID.) They shun the festival day, and that befits them: there is no festival for those who have lost life and mercy.

VERS. 3.-- And when he was in Bethany. (ID.) The young hart of the harts always returns to his own bed, that is, the Son obedient to the Father even unto death: he asks obedience of us. For Simon is interpreted obedient. Of Simon the leper. Simon the leper signifies the world unbelieving at first, afterwards believing. And as he was at meat, there came, etc. He himself reclining, that is, humbling himself, that the faith of the sinful woman 229Bmight touch him: which faith goes up from the feet to the head, and comes down from the head through faith, that is, from Christ to his members.

A woman. (BEDA.) Mary Magdalen, the sister of Lazarus whom the Lord raised up, etc., as far as she poured holy oil upon him, as Matthew and Mark relate.

An alabaster box. Alabaster is a white marble marked with divers drops, and it keeps ointments uncorrupted. Of spikenard. Nard is called pistic, that is, mixed, because it was compounded not of the root only, but of the spikes and of the leaves: which is the more precious.

And breaking. (HIER.) The house filled with the odour is heaven and earth. The broken alabaster is carnal desire, which is broken at the head: from which the whole body is framed together. (BED.) The devotion of Mary designates the faith and 229Cthe piety of the Church, etc., as far as she venerates him with pious preaching and with devout observances.

VERS. 4.-- And there were some. (ID.) By synecdoche he put the plural for the singular, etc., as far as whose habit of thieving he took care for this cause to make known. To what purpose is this waste. (HIER.) He that was lost found perdition out of salvation, so that in a fruitful fig tree he might light upon the noose of death.

VERS. 5.-- For this ointment might have been. (ID.) Under the pretext of avarice he speaks the mystery of faith, etc., as far as let us divide the spoils at evening.

VERS. 6.-- She hath wrought a good work. (ID.) He who believes in God, it is reputed to him unto a work of justice. For it is one thing to believe him, another to believe in him, that is, to cast oneself wholly upon him.

229DVERS. 7.-- But me you have not always. (BEDA.) Joined to you by bodily presence and familiarity as now. Whence the Apostle: Although we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know him (II Cor. V) [Vulg. 2 Cor. 5:16 sed nunc jam non novimus, "but now we know him so no longer"]. But spiritually he is always with us, whence: Behold I am with you even to the consummation of the world all days. (HIER.) Thus is it to be understood: But me you shall not always have in bodily presence, as before in companionship and familiarity.

VERS. 8.-- What she had. What you think to be a waste of the ointment is the office of burial. Nor is it a wonder if she has given me the good odour of faith, since I am about to shed my blood for her.

VERS. 9.-- Amen I say to you. (BEDA.) Note in Christ 230Athe knowledge of things to come, those about to suffer after a few days, he foreknows that his Gospel is to be preached in the whole world. It is to be noted that, as Mary through the whole world in which the Church is spread abroad earned glory for the loving service which she devoutly rendered to the Lord: so also Judas, who disparaged her, is defamed far and wide with the mark of perfidy. But the Lord rewards the good with loving praise, and is silent about the coming reproaches of the wicked man.

VERS. 10.-- One of the twelve. (HIER.) One in number, not in merit, in name not in divine power, in body not in mind, whence the bridegroom to the bride: Thou hast wounded my heart, my sister, with one of thy eyes, and with one hair of thy neck (Cant. IV). The eye and the hair are wisdom and virtue, since it is said to Judas with the rest: To you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God (Matth. XIII). And: 230BI have given you power (Luc. X), etc.

He went to, etc. He went away to the princes: and after he went out, Satan entered into him. Here night to night showeth knowledge. Every living thing is joined to that which is like itself (Matth. XXVIII). Mary runs to the apostles, that day to day may utter speech; Judas to the Jews, that night to night may show knowledge.

VERS. 11.-- And he sought how he might, etc. (HIER.) He promises to betray him, as his master had said before: To thee will I give all this power. BEDA. Many today shudder at the crime of Judas and yet do not beware of it, etc., as far as that, the witnesses being removed, they may exchange truth for a lie, and virtue for a crime.

VERS. 12.-- And on the first day of the unleavened bread. (Id.) On the fourteenth 230Cmoon, when, the leaven being cast away, the lamb was slain at evening, etc., as far as he consecrated the beginning of that very immolation, that is, of his own passion.

(ISID.) With bitterness is the unleavened bread eaten, which is our redemption. For the bitterness is the passion of the Lord.

VERS. 13.-- Go into the city. (BED.) It is a token of the foreknowledge of his godhead, etc., as far as and that the baptism of the life-giving font may be consecrated for the taking away of the crimes of the world. (HIER.) The city is the Church, which is girt with the wall of faith: the man who meets them is the primitive people, the pitcher of water the law of the letter. A man carrying a pitcher of water. (BEDA.) Of set purpose are the names both of the water-bearer and of the master of the house passed over in silence, that it may be signified that the opportunity is to be given to all who wish to keep the true pasch, that is, to be steeped in the sacraments of Christ, and who seek to receive him 230Dinto the lodging of their own mind.

Follow ye. (HIER.) He who leads on high, where the refreshment of Christ is, whence Rahab charges the spies to go not by the low places but by the heights.

VERS. 15.-- A large upper room. (ID.) The great Church, which declares the name of the Lord, strewn with the variety of the virtues and of tongues, whence: Surrounded with variety (Psal. XLIV) of virtues, in which the pasch is prepared for the Lord. The master of the house is Peter the apostle, to whom the Lord entrusted his house: that there may be one faith under one shepherd. (BED.) The upper room is the spiritual law, which, going out from the straits of the letter, receives the Saviour in a lofty place, etc., as far as because it knows that all the sacraments of the pasch 231Aand the other decrees of the law are his sacraments.

VERS. 17.-- And in the evening. (HIER.) The evening of the day points to the evening of the world. For about the eleventh hour come the last: who first receive the penny of eternal life: because before the cross Abraham was in hell, and after the cross the thief was in paradise.

VERS. 18.-- Amen I say, etc. As he had foretold of his passion: so he foretells of the betrayer, giving place for repentance, that when he had understood that his thoughts were foreknown by God, he might repent of his deed. Yet he does not point him out by name, lest, being openly refuted, he become more shameless. He casts the crime into the number: that he who is conscious of it may do penance. One of you. While falsehood is reproved, truth is proved and fulfilled. He that did eat 231Bmy bread, hath greatly supplanted me (Psal. XL). All are touched, that harmony may be made in the harp. All the strings, being well strung, answer with a concordant voice: Is it I, Lord? One, slack and moved by the love of money, said: Is it I, Rabbi?

VERS. 19.-- To be made sorrowful. As the eleven, because they had thought nothing evil against the Lord: but they believe their master more than themselves, and fearing their own frailty, sorrowful they ask concerning their own sin, of which they had no consciousness.

VERS. 20.-- One of the twelve. (HIER.) The wolf separates apart the sheep which he desires. The sheep which goes out of the fold lies open to the bites of the wolf. He that dippeth. (BEDA.) Wonderful is the patience of the Lord. First he said: One of you shall betray me, the betrayer persists in his evil. He reproves more openly: 231Cand yet he is not named outright. Judas, when the others are made sorrowful and draw back their hand from the food, with the rashness and shamelessness with which he betrays the Lord; puts his hand also with his master into the dish, that by boldness he might feign a good conscience.

VERS. 21.-- But woe. (ID.) For ever woe to that man who comes unworthily to the table of the Lord, etc., as far as the punishment is foretold, that he who is not overcome by shame may be corrected by fear.

VERS. 22.-- As they were eating. (ID.) The old pasch being ended, which was kept in commemoration of the deliverance of the people of God from Egypt, etc., as far as and therefore that he was to be raised the more swiftly from death. He took. (HIER.) Figuring his own body in the bread, etc., as far as the enemies are extinguished, which are the mysteries of the Church of Christ. 231D(BEDA.) The bread which strengthens the heart of man, etc., as far as or that we are saved without his passion.

VERS. 23.-- Thanks. He gave thanks and blessed, being now near to his passion, he who takes upon himself the punishment of another's iniquity: who did nothing worthy of suffering: that he might show with how even a mind every man ought to bear the scourges of his own fault.

They had drunk. (HIER.) Happy drunkenness: saving fulness, etc., as far as for the blood of the New Testament which is shed for many cleanses not all.

VERS. 25.-- Now I will not drink. (ID.) Here he changes the sacrifice, but he does not change the time; so that we should never keep the supper of Jesus before the fourteenth moon. He who makes the resurrection on the fourteenth, keeps the supper of the Lord on the 232Aeleventh, which has never been found either in the New or in the Old Testament. The vine. (BEDA.) The vine or the vineyard of the Lord is the Synagogue, etc., as far as I shall be filled with a new joy together with you over the salvation of that same people regenerated by baptism.

VERS. 26. And a hymn being said. (ID.) It can be understood as the hymn which, according to John, he sang, giving thanks to the Father, etc., as far as and that we ought to ascend by the graces of the Holy Spirit with which we are anointed in the heart. Unto the mount of Olives. (HIER.) On Mount Olivet Jesus is held fast: and thence he ascends to the heavens: that we may know that we ascend to the heavens from that place where we watch, and pray, and are bound, and do not fight back on the earth.

You shall all be scandalized. (BEDA.) He foretells what they shall suffer: that when they have suffered they may not despair, but 232Brepent.

VERS. 27.-- In this night. They who are drunk, are drunk in the night (I Thess. V), and they who are scandalized, are scandalized in the night, that is, being darkened in mind. (HIER.) All fall, but not all lie prostrate. Because he sleepeth, shall he not rise again? (Zach. XIII.) To fall is carnal: to lie prostrate is devilish. I will strike the shepherd. Strike the shepherd. The prophet asks for the passion of the Lord: the Father answers: I will strike the shepherd. At the prayers of the saints the Son is sent by the Father: that is, he is made flesh and is struck, and suffers: the sheep are scattered, the shepherd being taken. The resurrection is promised, that hope be not extinguished.

VERS. 29.-- But Peter. (ID.) A bird without feathers strives to fly on high: but the body weighs down the soul, so that, 232Cby the fear of a human death, the fear of the Lord is overcome.

VERS. 30.-- The cock shall twice give voice. (BEDA.) Others simply: Before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice, etc., as far as as also that word: He that shall look on a woman to lust after, hath already committed adultery with her (Matth. V). (HIER.) The cock crows: Peter denies thrice, etc., as far as and he washed away the filth of the threefold denial with tears.

VERS. 32.-- Gethsemani. (ID.) That is, the valley of fat ones, where fat bulls beset him and many calves surrounded him. Sit ye here. (ISID.) They are separated in prayer who are separated in the passion: because he prays, while they sleep, weighed down by the fatness of the heart. Till I pray. (BED.) When the Lord prays on the mountain, etc., as far as whence: He humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death. And greater love than this 232Dno man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends (Phil. II; Joan. XV).

VERS. 33.-- And he began to fear. (HIER.) We are taught to fear and to be sorrowful before the judgment of death, we who cannot say of ourselves, save through him: The prince of this world cometh, and in me he hath not anything (Joan. XIV).

VERS. 34.-- My soul is sorrowful, etc. (BED.) He is not sorrowful because of death, etc., as far as but from the sleep of unbelief and from the torpor of the mind.

VERS. 35.-- And he prayed. (ID.) This voice is the sound of our infirmity, etc., as far as but because it will not be otherwise, Not what I will, but what thou wilt.

(HIER.) This is against the Eutychians, who say that there is in Christ only one operation, one will: 233Abut here he shows the human, which through the infirmity of the flesh refuses the passion, and the divine, which is ready to accomplish the dispensation.

VERS. 36.-- But not what I will. (HIER.) Even to the end he ceases not to teach us to obey our fathers: and to set their will before our own.

VERS. 37.-- And he says to Peter, etc. He who had said: And if it behove me to die with thee, I will not deny thee: even if all shall be scandalized, yet not I (Matth. XXVI); now, through the greatness of his sorrow, cannot overcome sleep.

VERS. 38.-- That ye enter not. He does not say, that ye be not tempted, but that ye enter not into temptation, that is, that temptation may not overcome you, may not hold you within its nets.

(HIER.) He enters into temptation who neglects to pray. Thrice the disciples sleep, thrice the Lord in prayer 233Brouses them. The threefold sleeping signifies the three dead whom the Lord raised up. The first in the house, the second at the sepulchre, the third out of the sepulchre. The Lord's threefold watching teaches us that we have three persons in praying, and to ask pardon both for things past and for things present and for things to come. But the flesh is weak. (BEDA.) For the flesh by its own weight ever draws to the lowest things.

VERS. 42.-- Arise. After he had prayed the third time, he taught that the fear of the apostles was to be corrected by penance, and goes untroubled to the passion, saying: Arise, let us go. As if he should say, let them not find us fearing, but let us go of our own accord to meet them, so that, we being about to suffer, they may see joy and confidence.

VERS. 44.-- A sign. (HIER.) He gives the sign of a kiss with the venom of the devil: as Cain offered a sacrifice 233Cguileful and reprobate, whence they set wine with vinegar upon the cross.

VERS. 45.-- Rabbi. (BEDA.) With shameless and wicked assurance he calls him master, etc., as far as he fulfils that also: With them that hated peace (Psal. CXIX), etc.

VERS. 47.-- One. (ID.) Peter, according to John, with the same ardour of mind as in the rest. For he knew that Phinees, by punishing the sacrilegious, had received the reward of justice and of a perpetual priesthood. Luke says: That the Lord touched the ear and healed it (Luc. XXII). For he himself never forgets loving-kindness, and suffers not even his own enemies to be wounded. Mystically: teaching that they who in consenting to his death contracted a wound of the soul can, if they have worthily repented, deserve 233Dsalvation.

VERS. 48.-- As to a robber. (ID.) As if he should say: It is foolish to seize with swords and clubs one who delivers himself up to you of his own accord: and by night, as though he were in hiding, to hunt him out by means of a traitor, when daily he teaches in the temple. But therefore you gather against me in darkness, because your power is in darkness.

VERS. 50.-- Then, etc. (ID.) That is fulfilled which he said, that all should be scandalized, etc., as far as and they that were to be called back by God learned to give to their adversaries.

VERS. 52.-- But he, etc. As Joseph, leaving his cloak behind, fled naked out of the hands of the unchaste mistress. But whoever wishes to escape the hands of the wicked, let him leave in mind the things that are of the world, and flee after Jesus. 234AFrom them. Whose presence he loathed, and whose deeds. Not from the Lord, whose love, though absent in body, he kept fixed in his mind.

VERS. 53.-- The high priest, etc. Caiphas, namely, who according to John was the high priest of that year, concerning whom Josephus writes to the same effect, that he had bought the high priesthood for himself from the Roman prince without any merit of worth: what wonder then, if an unjust high priest judges unjustly?

VERS. 54.-- Afar off. (BEDA.) Because he was near to denial, had he been near to Christ he would not have denied: in this, nevertheless, he is to be admired, that he did not leave the Lord even though he fears. That he fears is of nature, that he follows is of devotion: that he denies is of stealth, that he repents is of faith. The court. (HIER.) The court is the worldly 234Bcircuit. The servants are the demons. The fire is fleshly desire, and he who abides with these is not able to weep for his sins. And he warmed himself. (BEDA.) There is a fire of charity; whereof it is said, etc., as far as and forthwith he set the secret places of his heart aflame with the coals of love.

VERS. 56.-- False testimony. (ID.) He is false who does not understand things said in the same sense in which they are said, etc., as far as so that he may seem to have spoken properly of the Jewish temple.

VERS. 60.-- And rising up, etc. Being angry, because he found no place for calumny, he shows by the motion of his body the madness of his mind. Not answering, etc. [Vulg. Mc 14:60 Non respondes, "Dost thou not answer"] He provokes him to an answer, that from any occasion of speech he may find place for accusing. But Jesus answered not, 234Cbecause he foresaw that whatever he should answer would be turned into calumny.

Thou art Christ. (HIER.) Whom he was awaiting from afar, him he did not see near at hand: as Isaac, with darkened eyes, did not know Jacob under his hands, but long afterwards sings of things to come concerning him.

VERS. 62.-- And you shall see. The priest asks after the Son of God; Jesus answers the Son of man; that we may understand the same to be Son of God and Son of man, lest we make a quaternity in the Trinity, and that man may be in God and God in man. On the right hand of power. Because he humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross: for which cause God also hath exalted him, and hath given him a name which is above every name 234D(Phil. II).

With the clouds of heaven. (HIER.) He ascended in a cloud, with a cloud he will come: that is, he ascended with his own body alone, which he took from the Virgin, and he is to come to judgment with the manifold Church, which is his body and his fulness, as Matthew says: But when the Son of man shall come, and all the angels with him, etc.

VERS. 63.-- But the high priest. (BEDA.) The same madness which before had shaken him from his seat, etc., as far as they did, when in Lycaonia they were honoured as gods. His garments, etc. (HIER.) That is, they lost the ephod in which the Jews had their honour, etc., as far as yet her chastity remains inviolate 235Aeven to the consummation of the world in those whom the lot of election shall find.

VERS. 64.-- Who all, etc. (HIER.) That by his own guilt he might loose our guilt, etc., as far as hence the prophet: What shall I render to the Lord for all the things that he hath rendered to me? (Psal. CXV.)

VERS. 65.-- To cover the face, etc. Not that he might not see their crimes, but that, as they themselves once did to Moses, they might hide from themselves the grace of the knowledge of him. This veil remains upon their heart until this day, which is taken away for them that believe in Christ. Whence, at his dying, it was as though the temple was rent, and the secret things of the holy of holies laid open.

They struck him with the palms of their hands. (BEDA.) He who was then struck with blows is now struck with the blasphemies of false Christians. 235BHe who was consumed with the spittle of unbelievers is now dishonoured by the raving reproaches of the faithful.

VERS. 68.-- But he, etc. Note that he denies Christ who denies that he is his disciple. For the Lord did not say: Thou shalt deny thyself to be my disciple, but thou shalt deny me. He denied him therefore when he denied that he was his disciple.

And he went forth without, etc. (HIER.) Peter, without the Spirit, yielded to the voice of a maidservant, etc., as far as and we go forth outside of what we were.

VERS. 70.-- For thou art also a Galilean. (BEDA.) The Galileans and the men of Jerusalem have the same tongue, but nevertheless every province and region has its own sound of speaking, which to change, etc., as far as because the men of Jerusalem sounded that name in one way, and the Galileans 235Cin another.

VERS. 72.-- And he remembered. (ID.) Peter denies by night, at the cock's crowing he repents. By day he professed three times that he loved him whom he had three times denied. For that which, etc., as far as he goes forth without (as the other Evangelists relate), that, set apart from the ungodly, he may the more freely wash away the guilt of his denial with tears.

VERS. 1.-- And straightway, etc. There follows: Binding Jesus. It was the custom of the Jews that whomsoever they had adjudged to death they should deliver bound to the judge. And it is to be noted that they had not bound him then for the first time, but as soon as he was seized by night in the garden, as John says: And thus they led him away to Annas first (Joan. XVIII).

(HIER.) Here is Samson bound by Dalila. Samson 235Dis interpreted, etc., as far as and he opens to us who thirst the fountain of everlasting life, that is, of his own body.

VERS. 2.-- Art thou the king of the Jews? When Pilate asks of no crime save whether he be the king of the Jews, the impiety of those men is convicted who found not even falsely anything to lay against him. Thou sayest. So he tempers his answer that he speaks the truth, and yet gives no occasion to calumny. And note that to Pilate, who bears the sentence unwillingly, he answered in some part: but to the priests and the chief men he would not answer, and judged them unworthy of his speech.

VERS. 4.-- See, etc. The heathen condemns Jesus, but refers the cause to the people of the Jews. See in how many things, etc.

236AVERS. 11.-- That rather Barabbas. (BEDA.) Their own petition cleaves to the Jews unto this day, which with all their labour they obtained. For, the choice being given them, they chose a robber instead of Jesus, a murderer instead of the Saviour. Deservedly therefore they lost salvation and life, and gave themselves over to robberies and seditions so far that they lost their kingdom and their country, and never received again the liberty of body and of soul.

VERS. 14.-- But Pilate. Pilate gave many occasions of freeing the Saviour, first in comparing the robber with the just one, then in bringing forward: What will you then that I do to the king of the Jews? And when they had answered: Let him be crucified, he did not at once give in, but according to the suggestion of his wife, who had sent to him (as Matthew says): Have thou nothing to do with that just man (Matth. XXVII), answering he said: 236BWhy, what evil hath he done? And in saying this he acquitted Jesus. But they the more, etc. David: Many dogs have encompassed me (Psal. XXI), etc. Isaias: I looked that he should do judgment, and behold iniquity: and justice, and behold a cry (Isa. V). Jeremias: My inheritance is become to me as a lion in the wood: it hath cried out against me (Jer. XII).

VERS. 15.-- Barabbas, and delivered, etc. (HIER.) These are the two goats, the one apompeius, that is, the emissary, is loosed and sent away with the sin of the people into the desert of hell. The other is slain as a lamb for the sins of those who are loosed. The Lord's portion is always sacrificed, the devil's portion, who is their master, is hurled unbridled into Tartarus.

Jesus with scourges. That he might free us from scourges; whence: 236CThe scourge shall not come nigh thy dwelling (Psal. XC): whereas before it was said: Many are the scourges of the sinner (Psal. XXXI).

(BEDA.) Jesus scourged with whips. He was scourged by Pilate himself, whence John: Pilate took Jesus and scourged him: and afterwards he added: And the soldiers platting a crown of thorns (Joan. XIX), etc. And he gave him over to the soldiers to be mocked. This he did for this end, that being sated with his punishments and reproaches they might not thirst further after his death.

VERS. 17.-- And they clothe him. (BEDA.) Matthew thus: And stripping him, they put a scarlet cloak about him (Marc. XXVII). Which is the same thing. For it was given in place of the royal purple, etc., as far as she is clothed in purple or in scarlet, when in the triumph of the glorious martyrs 236Dshe glories.

VERS. 19.-- And they struck, etc. The head of Christ is God. They therefore strike the head of Christ who deny him to be God. And they who defend their error by the authority of Scripture (because writing is wont to be made with a reed) strike his head as it were with a reed. They spit in his face who spurn the presence of his grace with execrable words conceived out of the inward madness of a blind mind, and deny that he came in the flesh.

They adored him. As though he had falsely called himself God. But today (which is of a graver madness) certain men adore him with sure faith as true God, yet by their perverse deeds forthwith despise his words as though they were fables, 237Aand set the promises of his kingdom after the enticements of things temporal.

And they lead him out. (HIER.) Here Abel is led out into the field by his brother to be slain. Here is Isaac, etc., as far as here is Jonas, cast out from the wood of the ship and into the sea and into the belly of the whale for three days.

VERS. 20.-- That they might crucify him. (HIER.) What is the very shape of the cross but the form of the four-square world? The east shines from the power, the right hand holds the north, the south stands at the left, the west is made firm beneath the feet. Whence the Apostle: That we may know what is the breadth, the length, the height and the depth (Ephes. III). Birds fly to the upper air in the form of a cross, a man adores, and swims, in the form of a cross, a ship is driven through the seas by a yard-arm made like to a cross. The letter Tau shows the sign of salvation and of the cross 237B.

VERS. 21.-- And they forced. (BEDA.) The Lord himself first bore his own cross, as John says: afterwards this Simon, of whom the others also speak, and this in an order of mystery altogether fitting. For Christ suffered for us, leaving you an example that you should follow his steps (Joan. XIX; I Petr. II).

(HIER.) Simon, who bears the cross under compulsion, is he who labours for human praise. Men force him to this labour whom the fear or the love of God does not force.

The father of Alexander. This Simon seems to have been of great repute, since his sons also are marked out by name as being known to all.

(HIER.) Some are called to mind through the merits of their fathers, 237Cothers through the merits of their sons. But this Simon, etc., as far as whence: by Jeremias it is said to Judea: A plentiful olive tree, fair, fruitful, goodly, the Lord called thy name.

VERS. 22.-- The place of Calvary. (HIER.) The Jews hand down that in this place of the mountain the ram was offered for Isaac (Gen. XXII), that there Christ might be made bald, that is, might be severed from his own flesh, namely from carnal Judea.

(BEDA.) Outside the gate the heads of the condemned were struck off, and the places of the beheaded are called calvaries. Therefore the Lord was crucified there, that where was the threshing-floor of the condemned, there the standards of the martyrs might be raised up. And because for us was made the curse of the cross, and he was both scourged and crucified for the salvation of all, he willed to be crucified as one guilty among the guilty.

237DVERS. 23.-- And they gave. (BEDA.) Matthew, mingled with gall (Matth. XXVII), which is the same thing. For he put gall for bitterness. For wine mingled with myrrh is most bitter; although it may be that they made the wine most bitter with both gall and myrrh.

(HIER.) And they gave, etc. By this vinegar the juice of the deadly apple is wiped away. And he took it not. That for which he suffers. Whence of him: That which I took not away, I then paid (Psal. LXVIII).

And he took it not. Matthew: And when he had tasted, he would not drink. Matthew shows that for us he tasted the bitterness of death, but on the third day rose again.

VERS. 24.-- And crucifying him. (HIER.) Here 238Asalvation is fastened upon a tree. First death was fastened upon a tree. The first tree was of the knowledge of good and evil; the second is for us a tree of good only, and of life. The stretching out of the first hand to the tree laid hold on death; the stretching out of the second found the life that had perished. By this wood are we carried over the billowy sea to the land of the living.

His garments. (BEDA.) The garment of Christ, divided into four according to the number of the soldiers, signifies the Church distributed equally, that is, harmoniously, through the four quarters of the world.

(HIER.) The garments of the Lord are the commandments with which his body is covered, which is the Church, because they are divided among the soldiers of the Gentiles, so that there are four orders while the faith is one, that is, the married, the widowed, 238Bthe prelates, the set apart. They cast lots for the undivided tunic, which is peace and truth in all things, after the manner of a royal mantle or of a ring. Casting lots. (ID.) Upon the tunic, namely, which was without seam. Here the things allotted, etc., as far as and the lot comes or falls by the judgment of God alone.

VERS. 25.-- Now it was the third hour. (HIER.) This Mark has properly, for at the sixth hour darkness overspread the earth, so that none could move his head. For from the thirtieth, etc., as far as who are rather to be said to have crucified him, though they strive to dissemble it, than the soldiers, who according to their office obeyed their captain.

VERS. 26.-- And there was a title. (BEDA.) The title shows that not even by killing him could they bring it about that 238Che should not be their king; whence: But I am appointed king by him, etc. For he is fittingly at once king and priest, since he offered to the Father the excellent victim of his own flesh upon the altar of the cross, and held forth the dignity of a king by the title, that he might make known to all that through the gibbet of the cross he had not lost, but had confirmed, his empire.

VERS. 27.-- And with him they crucify. (BEDA.) As the Apostle says: Our old man is crucified together with him, that the body of sin may be destroyed, that sin may no more have dominion over us. [Vulg. Rom. 6:6 vetus homo noster simul crucifixus est, ut destruatur corpus peccati, et ultra non serviamus peccato, "and that we may serve sin no longer"] So long therefore as our works act, that the body of sin may be emptied out, so long, etc., as far as whence the Apostle: That, being rooted and founded in charity, you may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth, the length, the height and the depth (Ephes. III). Two thieves. 238D(ID.) The thieves who were crucified with the Lord signify those who, by faith and confession of Christ, or by the struggle of their own martyrdom, undergo any strict continence whatsoever. And they who do this for eternal glory are signified by the merit and the faith of the thief on the right. But whoever does it for human glory or with any less worthy intention imitates the mind and the deeds of the thief on the left.

(HIER.) Truth, reckoned among the wicked, leaves the one on the left and takes up the other on the right; so will he do in the day of judgment, out of a like crime they obtain unlike ways. The one goes before Peter into paradise, the other before Judas into hell. A short confession purchases a long life, and a blasphemy that has an end is punished with an eternal penalty. Here the colt of Juda is bound to 239Athe vine, ἀναβόλαιον, that is, the cloak is dyed in the blood of the grape, here the kids tear the vineyard.

VERS. 29.-- Wagging their heads. (HIER.) The death of the wicked is sent forth when the bonds of hell are stirred up even to the neck, which is the neck of the human race.

VERS. 31.-- He saved others. (HIER.) Even unwilling they confess that he made others safe, and they condemn themselves by their own sentence, because he made others safe and could have saved himself if he would.

VERS. 32.-- Let him now come down. It is more to rise from the sepulchre, and yet they did not believe. These all have gone aside, they are become unprofitable together (Psal. XIII).

And they that were with him. (BEDA.) According to Luke (Luc. XXIII) one thief blasphemed, saying: If thou be 239BChrist, save thyself and us. The other, etc., as far as they who seek heavenly things without doubt attain to them, Christ mediating and having mercy.

VERS. 33.-- And when the sixth hour was come. (BEDA.) It is to be noted that at the sixth hour, that is, when the sun was about to withdraw from the centre of the world, he was crucified, and that at daybreak, at the rising of the sun, he rose again, etc., as far as and at what hour the first Adam by sinning brought death into the world, at that same hour the second Adam by dying should destroy death.

Darkness. (HIER.) Here is Noe made drunk and stripped, covered by heaven and earth with a drunkard's cloak, and mocked by man, here blood dripped from the wood.

VERS. 35.-- And some, etc. Not all. Perhaps the Roman soldiers, not understanding the property of the Hebrew tongue, from that which is said Eloi, thought 239Cthat Elias was being called upon by him. Or the Jews, perverting the Lord's words in their accustomed speech, defamed him of weakness, in that he was calling for the help of Elias.

VERS. 36.-- And running, etc. (BEDA.) John says more fully: Afterwards Jesus, knowing, etc. As if: This you have done the less, give what you are. For they were, etc., as far as whereof: The Lord planted the vine Soreth: and how art thou turned into the bitterness of a strange vine: and I looked that thou shouldst bring forth grapes, and thou hast brought forth thorns (Isa. V).

VERS. 37.-- But Jesus, etc. (BEDA.) Luke discloses what he said: Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit; and saying this he expired (Luc. XXIII). But that which John says: When he had taken the vinegar, he said: It is consummated: and bowing his head he delivered up 239Dthe spirit (Joan. XIX). Between this which he says: It is consummated, and that: bowing his head he sent forth the spirit, there was sent forth that great voice which John passes over in silence, and the rest record: Into thy hands, etc.

(HIER.) For, the flesh being made weak, the divine power straightway prevailed, which says: Open ye to me the gates of justice (Psal. CXVII), etc. But we who are of the earth die with no voice, or with one; for he expired with a lifted-up voice who came down from heaven.

VERS. 38.-- And the veil of the temple. That the ark of the testament and all the mysteries of the law which were covered may appear, and may pass over to the Gentiles. Before it was said: God is known in Judea, in Israel his name is great (Psal. LXXV); but now: Be thou exalted above the heavens, 240AO God (Ibid. LVI), and in all, etc.; and in the Gospel before: Go ye not into the way of the Gentiles (Matth. X).; and after the passion: Go ye, and teach all nations (Ibid. XXVIII).

VERS. 39.-- And seeing, etc. It is shown why the centurion wonders, because he saw that he had so expired, that is, had sent forth his spirit. For no one has the power of sending forth his spirit, save the creator of souls.

Truly, etc. (HIER.) Note that the centurion before the cross, in the very scandal of the passion, confesses him truly the Son of God: and Arius, etc., as far as and, the Synagogue keeping silence, he affirms him truly the Son of God.

VERS. 40.-- And there were. (ID.) As the female sex is not shut out from salvation through Mary the Virgin: so it is not driven back from the mystery of the cross, of knowledge 240Band of the resurrection, through the widow Mary Magdalen and the other mothers.

Of James the less and of Joseph. (BEDA.) By James the less he means James the son of Alpheus, who is also the brother of the Lord, in that he was the son of Mary the Lord's mother's sister. Of whom John: Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother (Joan. XIX), etc. He seems to call her Cleophas's from her father or from her kindred.

VERS. 42.-- And when it was now evening, etc. (ID.) Παρασκευὴ in Greek, preparation in Latin. By this name the Jews dwelling among the Greeks called the sixth day of the week, because on it they prepared the things that were needful for the sabbath, according as, etc., as far as until, the eighth age coming, the bodies themselves also, by the resurrection 240Cglorified, may together with the souls receive the incorruption of the eternal inheritance.

VERS. 43.-- Joseph came. (HIER.) Joseph came in the evening of the parasceve from Arimathia, which is interpreted laying down, to lay down the body of Christ, etc., as far as the elect, who are the stars of the sea, looking on from afar, when, if it can be done, even the elect shall be scandalized.

VERS. 46.-- And Joseph, etc. (BEDA.) From the simple burial of the Lord the ambition of the rich is condemned, who not even in their tombs, etc., as far as celebrates with earthly linen, as the body of the Lord was buried in a clean linen cloth: so was it decreed by pope Sylvester.

Which was hewn out. (BEDA.) It is said that the Lord's monument was a round house hewn out of the underlying rock, of such a height that a man standing upright 240Dcan scarcely reach the top with his hand stretched out. And it has an entrance, etc., as far as but the colour of the monument and of the tomb is said to be mingled of white and red.

VERS. 47.-- And Mary, etc. (ID.) Luke says: That all his acquaintance stood afar off, and the women that had followed him (Luc. XXIII). But when the others, his body being laid down, had returned to their own, the women alone, etc., as far as and they weigh carefully, with pious curiosity, whether haply they may be able to imitate him, and in what order his passion is to be embraced.

VERS. 1.-- And when the sabbath was past. (BEDA.) Luke says that returning from the monument they prepared spices and ointments, and on the sabbath they rested, because it had been commanded 241Athat the silence of the sabbath, etc., as far as with face enlightened, the darkness of vices being shaken off, to offer to the Lord the odour of good works and the sweetness of prayers.

(HIER.) Now with fragrant spices they run with the bride and the young maidens, after her we sprinkle the book, that is, the couch, etc., as far as and the Lord rising again in it with triumph and saying: This is the day which the Lord hath made, etc. (PSAL. CXVII).

VERS. 2.-- And very early. (HIER.) Which another calls the dawning. The dawning is between the darkness of the night and the brightness of the day, in which salvation came, to be made known in the Church after the manner of the sun, which rising sends the rosy dawn before it, so that so great a splendour may be seen by eyes made ready, when the time of the Lord's resurrection shone forth, that then the whole church of holy 241Bwomen might sing the praises of Christ, when he bestowed life and poured in the light of belief.

VERS. 3.-- And they said one to another. (HIER.) The eagles are gathered to the body, the martyrs and the apostles see the stone rolled away, which is the law of death, as if he should say: Where is, O death, thy sting (I Cor. XV)?

VERS. 4.-- The stone rolled back. (BEDA.) Matthew says: how was the stone rolled away by the angel? But allegorically, the rolling away of the stone signifies the resurrection of the mysteries of Christ, which had been covered by the veil of the letter of the law. For the law was written on stone, and when its covering was taken away the glory of the resurrection was shown forth, and the abolition of the ancient death, and the everlasting life that is to be hoped for by us began to be preached throughout the whole world.

241CVERS. 5.-- A young man. (HIER.) Not an old man, not an infant, but pleasant in age, as it is said: Rejoice, young man, in thy youth (Eccle. XI), which here is not true while it is mingled with old age.

(BEDA.) The women who came with spices see angels, because those minds behold the citizens above which come to God with virtues through holy desires.

Sitting on the right side. (BEDA.) Toward the southern part of that place where he had been laid, etc., as far as entering into the monument they found two angels standing there.

(GREG.) By the left hand is the present life, by the right the life eternal, etc., as far as and restoring them to the number of the angels he repaired the losses of the heavenly country.

241DVERS. 6.-- Be not affrighted. (GREG.) As if: Let them fear who love not the coming of the Lord or of the citizens above, who, weighed down by vices, despair of their fellowship. But you, why do you fear, who see your own fellow-citizens? Whence Matthew, describing the angel's appearing, says: His countenance was as lightning, and his garments as snow (Matt. XXVIII).

Jesus. Salvation. But because many were called by this name not substantially but by appellation, he determines it by the place, Nazarene, and adds the cause: Crucified. And he adds: He is risen, he is not here. By the presence of the flesh, who nevertheless is nowhere absent by the presence of his majesty. Behold the place. Mortality is shown to mortals for the giving of due thanks, 242Athat we may understand what we are and have been, and may know what we shall be.

VERS. 7.-- And to Peter. (BEDA.) Peter is called by name, lest he despair because of his denial. For unless, etc., as far as that he who was to be the shepherd of the Church might learn in his own fault how he ought to have mercy on others.

And to Peter. (HIER.) He shows himself unworthy of discipleship when he thrice denies his master. But past sins do not hurt when they do not please.

He goeth before you. Well is it said of our Redeemer: for Galilee is interpreted a passing over accomplished. For he had already passed over from the passion to the resurrection, from death to life, from punishment to glory. And well is he seen by the disciples in Galilee after the resurrection, because the glory of his resurrection 242Bwe shall afterwards see with joy, if only we now pass over from vices to the height of the virtues. He therefore who is announced in the sepulchre is shown in the passing over; and he who is known in the mortification of the flesh is seen in the passing over of the mind.

(BEDA.) Note that Mark says: He goeth before you into Galilee, etc. Nor yet did he relate that he was seen there. But Matthew, etc., as far as as he shall be known in that eternity, whither he will also lead us through the form of a servant, that being free we may contemplate the form of the Lord.

VERS. 8.-- They fled. (HIER.) Of the life to come it is said: Sorrow and mourning shall flee away. The women before the resurrection of all imitate what they do afterwards, that is, what they are to do, they flee death and dread.

And to no one. (HIER.) Because they alone see the mystery of the resurrection 242Cwho have deserved it, whence, according to John: But Peter rising up ran to the monument, that he might see what he had heard.

VERS. 9.-- But rising. In the morning he rose, in the evening he was buried, that he might fulfil this: In the evening weeping shall have place, and in the morning gladness (Psal. XXIX). Buried therefore on the sixth day of the week, which is called the parasceve, about evening, through the following night and the sabbath day, laid in the monument with the night following, on the third day, that is, at first light on the first day of the week, he rose again. And fittingly he lay one day and two nights in the sepulchre, because he joined the light of his own single death to the darkness of our twofold death. For we were held in the death of the soul and of the spirit, whence he brought to us his own, that is, the death of the flesh, 242Dand loosed our two: his single he set against our twofold, and dying he took away our twofold. He appeared first to Mary Magdalen. He is shown first to Mary Magdalen, out of whom he had cast seven demons: because harlots and publicans go before the Synagogue into the kingdom of God, as the thief went before the apostles. The apostles weep and mourn, because they have not yet seen, but soon they shall be comforted.

(BEDA.) In the beginning the woman was to the man the author of guilt, the man the executor of the error, etc., as far as that she might announce the resurrection to the evangelists and apostles themselves.

VERS. 11.-- And they hearing. (BEDA.) That the disciples are slow to believe the resurrection is not so much their weakness as our strength; for to them that doubted 243Athe resurrection was shown by many proofs, by which we also are the more firmly established.

VERS. 12.-- To two of them. (BEDA.) This Luke has more openly (Luc. XXIV): Their eyes, etc. Afterwards they knew him in the breaking of bread. And as Luke says: Rising up the same hour they went back to Jerusalem, etc.

As they walked. (HIER.) Faith labours here, leading the active life, there the contemplative, etc., as far as forgetful of his own flesh he asks in this life what after it we hope for in the life to come.

VERS. 14.-- Last of all, etc. (BEDA.) On the fortieth day, when he was now about to depart from them into heaven, this to them especially, etc., as far as: Going into the whole world, preach ye the Gospel.

The hardness of heart, etc. (HIER.) That there may succeed a heart of flesh 243Bfull of charity: hence it is that the troops of the martyrs willingly seek the death of this world, because they know that for a temporal destruction they shall live for ever.

VERS. 15.-- To every creature. To every nation of the Gentiles. For before it had been said: Go ye not into the way of the Gentiles (Matth. X): namely, that the preaching of the apostles, first driven back from Judea, might then be made a help to the Gentiles.

(HIER.) To the whole human race, which has something in common with every creature, with angels, with cattle, with trees, with stones, with fire and water, with hot and cold, with wet and dry, because man is called a lesser world.

VERS. 16.-- He that believeth, etc. Little ones believe through others, as from others they drew those things which are remitted to them in baptism, 243Ctheir sins.

VERS. 17.-- And signs, etc. Is it then that if we work not signs 244Awe do not believe? But these were necessary in the beginning, that faith might be nourished by miracles, but now that the faith of the Church is confirmed they are not necessary. They shall cast out demons, etc. This the Church does today spiritually, when through the grace of exorcism she lays her hand upon believers and drives out the malignant spirits. They shall speak with new tongues. This comes to pass while the faithful leave behind the worldly words of their former life, and sound forth holy mysteries, and extol the praises and the power of God as much as they are able.

VERS. 18.-- If they shall drink any deadly thing, etc. While they hear pestilent persuasions, and do not carry them through even to deeds, thereby it does them no hurt if they drink a deadly thing. They shall lay hands upon the sick, etc. While they strengthen their neighbours, confirmed in good work, by the example of good working, 244Bthey lay hands upon the sick, and they shall do well. These miracles are the greater by so much as they are spiritual; for by this souls are raised up, not bodies.

VERS. 19.-- Into heaven. (AUG.) Note that sometimes the heavens in the plural and sometimes heaven in the singular, etc., as far as where the belief of the faithful is instructed more by deeds than by words.

And he sitteth on the right hand. (BEDA.) And now judging all things, at the end of all he is to come as Judge. But Stephen saw him standing, because in the contest he had him as helper.

VERS. 20.-- But they, etc. (BEDA.) Note that by how much the later Mark began his Gospel, by so much, etc., as far as whereby the apostles sowed that same word of the Gospel 244Cthroughout the whole world.