Sermon 272A

Sermon 272

On the Fiftieth Day of the Resurrection

Fragment

It is wonderful that the whole world has believed.

The Lord Christ was humbled so that we might learn to be humble: He who contains all things was conceived, He who brings forth all things was born, He who enlivens all things died; but after three days He rose again, and ascended into heaven, and placed the human flesh that He had assumed at the right hand of the Father. It is wonderful, brethren—and this is what the impious do not want to believe—it is wonderful for a man to have risen in the flesh and ascended into heaven with flesh; but it is much more wonderful that the whole world believed such an incredible thing. What is more incredible, that God did such things, or that the world was able to believe it? What if we also consider the manner by which the world believed? Even this is truly perceived as divine, and is found to be very wonderful. Christ sent fishermen, uneducated in liberal arts and altogether unpolished as far as the teachings of the world are concerned, not versed in grammar, not armed with dialectic, with the nets of faith into the sea of the world, a very few of them. What do I mean by "a very few"? He sent twelve. And yet through them He filled the churches with every kind of fish, so that even many of the wise of the world, to whom the cross of Christ seemed ignominious, are marked with it on their foreheads, and what they used to consider shameful, and mocked us for, they now establish in the citadel of their honor.