Oration Concerning Simeon and Anna

IX. Let then, says he, what I have thus far said in brief, suffice for the present as my offering of thanks to God. But what shall I say to you, O mother-virgin and virgin-mother? For the praise even of her who is not man's work exceeds the power of man. Wherefore the dimness of my poverty I will make bright with the splendour of the gifts of the spirits that around you shine, and offering to you of your own, from the immortal meadows I will pluck a garland for your sacred and divinely crowned head. With your ancestral hymns will I greet you, O daughter of David, and mother of the Lord and God of David. For it were both base and inauspicious to adorn you, who in your own glory excellest with that which belongs unto another. Receive, therefore, O lady most benignant, gifts precious, and such as are fitted to you alone, O you who art exalted above all generations, and who, among all created things, both visible and invisible, shinest forth as the most honourable. Blessed is the root of Jesse, and thrice blessed is the house of David, in which you have sprung up. God is in the midst of you, and you shall not be moved, for the Most High has made holy the place of His tabernacle. For in you the covenants and oaths made of God unto the fathers have received a most glorious fulfilment, since by you the Lord has appeared, the God of hosts with us. That bush which could not be touched, which beforehand shadowed forth your figure endowed with divine majesty, bare God without being consumed, who manifested Himself to the prophet just so far as He willed to be seen. Then, again, that hard and rugged rock, which imaged forth the grace and refreshment which has sprung out from you for all the world, brought forth abundantly in the desert out of its thirsty sides a healing draught for the fainting people. Yea, moreover, the rod of the priest which, without culture, blossomed forth in fruit, the pledge and earnest of a perpetual priesthood, furnished no contemptible symbol of your supernatural child-bearing. What, moreover? Hath not the mighty Moses expressly declared, that on account of these types of you, hard to be understood, he delayed longer on the mountain, in order that he might learn, O holy one, the mysteries that with you are connected? For being commanded to build the ark as a sign and similitude of this thing, he was not negligent in obeying the command, although a tragic occurrence happened on his descent from the mount; but having made it in size five cubits and a half, he appointed it to be the receptacle of the law, and covered it with the wings of the cherubim, most evidently pre-signifying you, the mother of God, who hast conceived Him without corruption, and in an ineffable manner brought forth Him who is Himself, as it were, the very consistence of incorruption, and that within the limits of the five and a half circles of the world. On your account, and the undefiled Incarnation of God, the Word, which by you had place for the sake of that flesh which immutably and indivisibly remains with Him for ever. The golden pot also, as a most certain type, preserved the manna contained in it, which in other cases was changed day by day, unchanged, and keeping fresh for ages. The prophet Elijah likewise, as prescient of your chastity, and being emulous of it through the Spirit, bound around him the crown of that fiery life, being by the divine decree adjudged superior to death. You also, prefiguring his successor Elisha, having been instructed by a wise master, and anticipating your presence who wast not yet born, by certain sure indications of the things that would have place hereafter, ministered help and healing to those who were in need of it, which was of a virtue beyond nature; now with a new cruse, which contained healing salt, curing the deadly waters, to show that the world was to be recreated by the mystery manifested in you; now with unleavened meal, in type responding to your child-bearing, without being defiled by the seed of man, banishing from the food the bitterness of death; and then again, by efforts which transcended nature, rising superior to the natural elements in the Jordan, and thus exhibiting, in signs beforehand, the descent of our Lord into Hades, and His wonderful deliverance of those who were held fast in corruption. For all things yielded and succumbed to that divine image which prefigured you.

X. But why do I digress, and lengthen out my discourse, giving it the rein with these varied illustrations, and that when the truth of your matter stands like a column before the eye, in which it were better and more profitable to luxuriate and delight in? Wherefore, bidding adieu to the spiritual narrations and wondrous deeds of the saints throughout all ages, I pass on to you who art always to be had in remembrance, and who boldest the helm, as it were, of this festival.

Blessed are you, all-blessed, and to be desired of all. Blessed of the Lord is your name, full of divine grace, and grateful exceedingly to God, mother of God, you that givest light to the faithful. You are the circumscription, so to speak, of Him who cannot be circumscribed; the root of the most beautiful flower; the mother of the Creator; the nurse of the Nourisher; the circumference of Him who embraces all things; the upholder of Him who upholds all things by His word; the gate through which God appears in the flesh; the tongs of that cleansing coal; the bosom in small of that bosom which is all-containing; the fleece of wool, the mystery of which cannot be solved; the well of Bethlehem, that reservoir of life which David longed for, out of which the draught of immortality gushed forth; the mercy-seat from which God in human form was made known unto men; the spotless robe of Him who clothes Himself with light as with a garment. You have lent to God, who stands in need of nothing, that flesh which He had not, in order that the Omnipotent might become that which it was his good pleasure to be. What is more splendid than this? What than this is more sublime? He who fills earth and heaven, whose are all things, has become in need of you, for you have lent to God that flesh which He had not. You have clad the Mighty One with that beauteous panoply of the body by which it has become possible for Him to be seen by my eyes. And I, in order that I might freely approach to behold Him, have received that by which all the fiery darts of the wicked shall be quenched. Hail! Hail! Mother and handmaid of God. Hail! Hail! You to whom the great Creditor of all is a debtor. We are all debtors to God, but to you He is Himself indebted.

For He who said, “Honour your father and your mother,” will have most assuredly, as Himself willing to be proved by such proofs, kept inviolate that grace, and His own decree towards her who ministered to Him that nativity to which He voluntarily stooped, and will have glorified with a divine honour her whom He, as being without a father, even as she was without a husband, Himself has written down as mother. Even so must these things be. For the hymns which we offer to you, O you most holy and admirable habitation of God, are no merely useless and ornamental words. Nor, again, is your spiritual laudation mere secular trifling, or the shoutings of a false flattery, O you who of God art praised; you who to God gavest suck; who by nativity givest unto mortals their beginning of being, but they are of clear and evident truth. But the time would fail us, ages and succeeding generations too, to render unto you your fitting salutation as the mother of the King Eternal, even as somewhere the illustrious prophet says, teaching us how incomprehensible you are. How great is the house of God, and how large is the place of His possession! Great, and has none end, high and unmeasurable. For verily, verily, this prophetic oracle, and most true saying, is concerning your majesty; for you alone hast been thought worthy to share with God the things of God; who hast alone borne in the flesh Him, who of God the Father was the Eternally and Only-Begotten. So do they truly believe who hold fast to the pure faith.