Sermons on the Song of Songs

I am not unaware, my brethren, that these people boast that they themselves and they alone constitute the mystical body of Christ. But indeed they ought to have no difficulty in persuading themselves of this, considering that they are also persuaded that they have the power of daily consecrating on their altars the Body and Blood of Christ to be their nourishment and to form them into His mystical body and members. For they proudly proclaim themselves to be the successors of the apostles and call themselves the apostolics, although they are able to show no proof of their apostolate. How long will they keep their light concealed under a bushel? You are the light of the world,” said the Lord to His apostles; and therefore He set them upon a candlestick in order that they might illumine the whole earth. It ought to be a subject of shame to the successors of the apostles that they are the light, not of the world, but only of a bushel. For they are rather the darkness of the world. Let us then say to these apostles: You are the darkness of the world; and with that let us pass on to the consideration of their other doctrines.

They call themselves the Church. But they contradict thereby Him Who has said, “A city seated on a high mountain cannot be hid.” I say to them: do you really believe that the stone which was “cut out of the mountain without hands” and which “became a great mountain and filled the whole earth” is enclosed within your little hiding-holes? However, we must not pause even here. They refuse to proclaim openly what they believe, content with their secret whispering. But Christ holds and shall ever hold His inheritance undiminished, and “the utmost parts of the earth for His possession” They only withdraw themselves from that great inheritance, who endeavour to wrest it from Christ.

But look at these slanderers, behold these dogs. They ridicule us because we administer baptism to infants, because we pray for the dead, because we solicit the intercession of the saints. They themselves are full of impatience to proscribe Christ amongst all classes of men, in both sexes, in infants and adults, in the living and in the dead. For He is interdicted to the child on account of his natural incapacity; and to him who has reached the age of discretion, because of the difficulty of observing continence. Moreover, they would rob the dead of the suffrages of the living; and at the same time they try to defraud the living of the assistance of the saints in glory. But God forbid that their designs should prosper. No, the Lord will not abandon His people, which rival in number the sands of the sea; neither shall He Who has redeemed all men be satisfied with saving a handful of heretics. For “with Him is a plentiful—not a scanty—redemption.” But what proportion can the fewness of these sectaries bear to the immensity of the ransom? They rather deprive themselves of the benefit of redemption by their attempt to lessen its fruit. What matters it that the infant cannot speak for himself, since the voice of the Blood of his Brother—and such a Brother—crieth out to God from the earth in his behalf. His mother, the Church, too, stands by and speaks for him. But is the infant altogether silent? Does he not seem to you, my brethren, to sigh for the “fountains of the Saviour,” and to call aloud to God, and by his inarticulate cries to exclaim, “Lord, I suffer violence, answer Thou for me”! He implores the help of grace because he suffers violence from nature. The misery of the innocent one lifts up its voice, and the ignorance of the little one, and the helplessness of the abandoned one. Therefore, all these advocates plead the infant’s cause, his Brother’s Blood, his mother’s faith, the helplessness of his misery, and the misery of his helplessness. And they plead with the Father. Now the Father, being a true father, can never contradict the name He bears.

Let no man object to me that the infant has not faith. For his mother, the Church, communicates to him her own, wrapping it up for him (so to speak) in the sacrament of regeneration, until he becomes capable of receiving it by the positive and explicit concurrence of his own intellect and will. Do you think that the faith of the Church is like the Prophet’s “short covering which cannot cover two”? Nay, it is a most ample cloak. For surely her faith is not less than that of the Canaanite woman, which was sufficient, as we know, to cover both herself and her daughter. Hence she deserved to hear, “O woman, great is thy faith. Be it done to thee as thou wilt.” Or shall it be said that the Church’s faith is inferior to the faith of them who let down the paralytic through the roof and obtained for him the health both of soul and body? “And Jesus, seeing their faith,” so we read, “said to the man sick of the palsy: Be of good heart, son, thy sins are forgiven thee.” And a little afterwards He added, “Arise, take up thy bed and walk.” Anyone who believes what is here recorded, can have no difficulty in convincing himself of the reasonableness of the confidence entertained by the Church, not only as regards the salvation of the infants baptised in her faith, but also concerning the martyr’s crown for the little ones that were slain for the sake of Christ. This being so, no argument against the salvation of regenerated infants can be drawn from the words of the Apostle, “Without faith it is impossible to please God.” For those infants are not without faith, who in testimony of their faith have received the grace of baptism. Neither does their cause suffer any prejudice from the Saviour’s pronouncement, “But he that believeth not shall be condemned.” For what is it to believe except to have faith? Accordingly, as the Apostle tells us, the woman “shall be saved through child-bearing; if she continue in faith and love and sanctification with sobriety”; the infant shall be saved by the regeneration of holy baptism; the adult, who cannot observe continence, shall be redeemed with the thirty-fold fruit of conjugal virtue; the dead who may have need and may be found worthy, shall obtain relief, through the ministry of the angels, from the prayers and sacrifices of the living; and the living, finally, shall never lack the assistance and consolation of the saints in bliss, who, out of an affection of tender charity, remain always near them, through and in God, everywhere present. “For to this end,” says the Apostle, “Christ died and rose again, that He might be Lord both of the dead and of the living.” It may also be said, that to this end He was born as a little child, and passed through each of the different stages of human existence between infancy and maturity, in order that His example might be wanting to none.