Homilies on the Gospel of John

“Touch Me not”?

2. Some assert, that she asked for spiritual grace, because she had heard Him when with the disciples say, “If I go to the Father, 'I will ask Him, and He shall give you another Comforter.'” But how could she who was not present with the disciples have heard this? Besides, such an imagination is far from the meaning here. And how should she ask, when He had not yet gone to the Father? What then is the sense? Methinks that she wished still to converse with Him as before, and that in her joy she perceived nothing great in Him, although He had become far more excellent in the Flesh. To lead her therefore from this idea, and that she might speak to Him with much awe, (for neither with the disciples does He henceforth appear so familiar as before,) He raises her thoughts, that she should give more reverent heed to Him. To have said, “Approach Me not as you did before, for matters are not in the same state, nor shall I henceforth be with you in the same way,” would have been harsh and high-sounding; but the saying,

“I am not yet ascended to the Father,” though not painful to hear, was the saying of One declaring the same thing. For by saying, “I am not yet ascended,” He shows that He hastes and presses there; and that it was not meet that One about to depart there, and no longer to converse with men, should be looked on with the same feelings as before. And the sequel shows that this is the case.

“Go and say unto the brethren, that I go unto My Father, and your Father, unto My God and your God.”

Yet He was not about to do so immediately, but after forty days. How then says He this? With a desire to raise their minds, and to persuade them that He departs into the heavens. But the, “To My Father and your Father, to My God, and your God,” belongs to the Dispensation, since the “ascending” also belongs to His Flesh. For He speaks these words to one who had no high thoughts. “Is then the Father His in one way, and ours in another?” Assuredly then He is. For if He is God of the righteous in a manner different from that in which He is God of other men, much more in the case of the Son and us. For because He had said, “Say to the brethren,” in order that they might not imagine any equality from this, He showed the difference. He was about to sit on His Father's throne, but they to stand by. So that albeit in His Subsistence according to the Flesh He became our Brother, yet in Honor He greatly differed from us, it cannot even be told how much.