Homilies on the Gospel of St. Matthew

⁶ Do you see how great is the wisdom of the Baptist? How, when He Himself is preaching, He says everything to alarm, and fill them with anxiety; but when He is sending men to Him, whatever was mild and apt to recover them: not bringing forward the axe, nor the tree that is cut down and burnt, and cast into the fire, nor the wrath to come, but remission of sins, and removing of punishment, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption, and adoption, and brotherhood, and a partaking of the inheritance, and an abundant supply of the Holy Ghost. For all these things he obscurely denoted, when he said, “He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost;” at once, by the very figure of speech, declaring the abundance of the grace (for he said not, “He will give you the Holy Ghost,” but “He will baptize you with the Holy Ghost”); and by the specification of fire on the other hand indicating the vehement and uncontrollable quality of His grace.

Imagine only what sort of men it was meet for the hearers to become, when they considered that they were at once to be like the prophets, and like those great ones. For it was on this account, you see, that he made mention at all of fire; that he might lead them to reflect on the memory of those men. Because, of all the visions that appeared unto them, I had almost said, the more part appeared in fire; thus God discoursed with Moses in the bush, thus with all the people in the mount Sinai, thus with Ezekiel on the cherubim.

And mark again how he rouses the hearer, by putting that first which was to take place after all. For the Lamb was to be slain, and sin to be blotted out, and the enmity to be destroyed, and the burial to take place, and the resurrection, and then the Spirit to come. But none of these things does he mention as yet, but that first which was last, and for the sake of which all the former were done, and which was fittest to proclaim His dignity; so that when the hearer should be told that he was to receive so great a Spirit he might search with himself, how and in what manner this shall be, while sin so prevails; that finding him full of thought and prepared for that lesson, he might thereupon introduce what he had to say touching the Passion, no man being any more offended, under the expectation of such a gift.

Wherefore he again cried out, saying, “Behold the Lamb of God, which bears the sin of the world.” He did not say, “which remits,” but, that which implies a more guardian care, “which hears it.” For it is not all one, simply to remit, and to take it upon Himself. For the one was to be done without peril, the other with death.

And again, he said, “He is Son of God.” But not even this declared His rank openly to the hearers (for they did not so much as know yet how to conceive of Him as a true Son): but by so great a gift of the Spirit that also was established. Therefore the Father also in sending John gave him, as you know, this as a first token of the dignity of Him that had come, saying, “Upon whom you shall see the Spirit descending and remaining, the same is He which baptizes with the Holy Ghost.” Wherefore himself too says, “I saw and bare record that this is the Son of God;” as though the one were to all time the clear evidence of the other.