Cornelius a Lapide
Table of Contents
Synopsis of the Chapter
First, it describes Christ's forty-day fast in the desert and His threefold temptation by Satan. Second, at verse 13, it narrates that Christ began to preach the kingdom of heaven in the city of Capernaum. Third, at verse 18, that Christ called Peter, Andrew, James, and John to follow Him, and that many flocked to Christ on account of the illnesses which He was healing.
Vulgate Text: Matthew 4:1-25
1. Then Jesus was led into the desert by the Spirit, to be tempted by the devil. 2. And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterwards He was hungry. 3. And the tempter came and said to Him: If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread. 4. He answered and said: It is written: Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. 5. Then the devil took Him into the holy city, and set Him upon the pinnacle of the temple, 6. and said to Him: If You are the Son of God, cast Yourself down. For it is written: He has given His angels charge concerning You, and in their hands they shall bear You up, lest perhaps You dash Your foot against a stone. 7. Jesus said to him again: It is written: You shall not tempt the Lord your God. 8. Again the devil took Him to a very high mountain, and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory, 9. and said to Him: All these things I will give You, if falling down You will adore me. 10. Then Jesus said to him: Begone, Satan: for it is written: The Lord your God you shall adore, and Him alone shall you serve. 11. Then the devil left Him; and behold angels came and ministered to Him. 12. And when Jesus heard that John had been delivered up, He withdrew into Galilee; 13. and leaving the city of Nazareth, He came and dwelt in Capernaum on the sea coast, in the borders of Zebulun and Naphtali: 14. that what was spoken by Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled: 15. Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali, the way of the sea beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles: 16. the people who sat in darkness saw a great light, and upon those sitting in the region of the shadow of death, light has risen for them. 17. From that time Jesus began to preach and to say: Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. 18. And Jesus, walking by the Sea of Galilee, saw two brothers, Simon who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea (for they were fishermen), 19. and He said to them: Come after Me, and I will make you fishers of men. 20. And they immediately, leaving their nets, followed Him. 21. And going on from there, He saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in a boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets; and He called them. 22. And they immediately, leaving their nets and their father, followed Him. 23. And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the Gospel of the kingdom, and healing every disease and every infirmity among the people. 24. And His fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought to Him all who were sick, afflicted with various diseases and torments, and those who were possessed by demons, and lunatics, and paralytics, and He healed them; 25. and great multitudes followed Him from Galilee, and the Decapolis, and from Jerusalem, and from Judea, and from beyond the Jordan.
Verse 1: Jesus Led into the Desert by the Spirit
1. THEN JESUS WAS LED INTO THE DESERT BY THE SPIRIT, TO BE TEMPTED BY THE DEVIL. — The Syriac has "by the accuser"; for diabolos in Greek means "accuser, slanderer," which is above all what Satan is, who perpetually accuses men before God, so as to consign them to himself and his power in hell.
"Then" — namely, immediately after Christ's baptism. Hence Mark, chapter 1:12, says: "And immediately the Spirit drove Him into the desert." And Luke, chapter 4:1: "And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the desert." From this it appears that Christ, on the same day, January 6, on which He was baptized, was driven by the Spirit into the desert, and on that same day as it ended and the seventh began, He began His fast of 40 days, and therefore finished it on February 15. For most swiftly for every good work is the Holy Spirit, equally as Christ.
HE WAS LED. — In Greek anechthe, that is, He was withdrawn and removed from the midst, so that He might withdraw from the crowd of people with whom He had hitherto lived, into the desert, and there, devoting Himself to prayer and fasting, He might gain a reputation for holiness among the people, and begin to preach with greater authority, just as His forerunner and precursor John the Baptist had done. Mark has: "The Spirit drove Him out," where the word "drove" signifies the force, efficacy, and eagerness of the Spirit, which was in Christ and was to be in the Apostles and other Christians, whom the Holy Spirit was to possess and drive to heroic works of virtue, according to Romans 8:14: "Those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God." So St. Jerome, St. Hilary, and the Author of the Imperfect Work. Christ was therefore led by the Spirit, not caught up through the air, but on His own feet, most eagerly pressing forward by the impulse of the Spirit to the arena of combat with Satan to be entered upon in the desert. For the desert was for Christ the training-ground of prayer, fasting, and the angelic life, and there He entered into a duel with Lucifer and overthrew him. See St. Basil, On the Praises of the Desert, and what I have noted on Hosea 2:14, on those words: "I will lead her into the wilderness, and I will speak to her heart."
INTO THE DESERT. — This desert is called Quarantana, which Adrichomius describes thus from Breidenbach, Brochard, and Salignac in his Description of the Holy Land, page 19, number 97: "The desert of Quarantana begins between Jerusalem and Jericho, near Anathoth, and extends above Gilgal as far as the desert of Tekoa and En-gedi, near the Dead Sea. Here St. John the Baptist dwelt, and in his memory a church and monastery were built which Greek monks inhabited, but in the times of Breidenbach it was desolate. There, when Christ came to him to be baptized, John pointed Him out with his finger, saying: Behold the Lamb of God. In this place Christ fasted 40 days and 40 nights, living and dwelling with the beasts." In this desert near the Jordan, of the same name, is: "Quarantana, a high mountain and difficult to ascend, on which the Lord was first tempted by Satan. On the summit of this mountain is a ruined chapel, venerable for the fasting and prayer of Christ."
Tropologically: hear St. Ambrose, book 3 On Virgins: "Let us therefore, he says, far from luxury, far from wantonness, as in the dry and fasting soil of this life, follow Christ who flees from pleasures. Christ is not found in the marketplace, not in the streets. Let us by no means seek Christ where we cannot find Him. Christ is not a loiterer in the market. For Christ is peace; in the marketplace are quarrels. Christ is justice; in the marketplace is iniquity. Christ is a worker; in the marketplace is empty idleness. Christ is charity; in the marketplace is detraction. Christ is faith; in the marketplace are fraud and treachery. Christ is in the Church; in the marketplace are idols, etc."
BY THE SPIRIT. — Not by the devil, but by the Holy Spirit; for this Spirit preceded in the previous chapter, in the second-to-last verse, where it is said of Jesus: "He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming upon Him." This Spirit of God, then, was the possessor and charioteer of Christ, driving Him into the desert. Whence the Syriac translates: "by the Spirit of holiness," that is, by the Holy Spirit, who is most holy and the fount of all holiness, and this is clear from the Greek article, tou pneumatos, as if to say that Spirit, namely the great, first, supreme, and divine one; and because this Spirit is opposed to the devil, who follows as the antagonist of Christ and the Holy Spirit, "so that the evil spirit might find Him there," says St. Gregory, homily 16 on the Gospels. Finally, the word "Spirit," when used absolutely, signifies the Holy Spirit, as St. Jerome noted from his master Didymus.
TO BE TEMPTED BY THE DEVIL. — The word "to" does not signify that the Holy Spirit directly intended the temptation of the devil to be inflicted on Christ, for this would be evil and perverse, but that He intended only to permit this temptation, on account of the fruit and victory of Christ, which He certainly foresaw would come about by His help, and therefore He set Christ before the devil who desired this temptation, and as it were matched and opposed Him as an athlete for a duel with the same.
First, therefore, the Holy Spirit by this act intended that Christ, tempted immediately after baptism, should give to Christians already baptized and converted to God an example of life, by which they would learn to resist temptations immediately arising and to fortify themselves against them. So St. Chrysostom and Hilary: whence Tertullian, book On Baptism, last chapter, teaches that it is here signified that no one untested will attain the kingdom of God; and at the same time it was shown who is the architect and maker of all temptations, as the same author says, book On Prayer, chapter 8.
Secondly, so that He might show that no temptation is insuperable, but that all are overcome by grace breathed by Him, by prayer, fasting, the words of Sacred Scripture, the meditation on God's commandments and promises, and by constancy, fortitude, and trust in God, as He demonstrated by His own example. See what was said on Ecclesiasticus, chapter 2, verse 1 and following, where I have noted many things on this matter.
Thirdly, so that Christ might show and present Himself as similar to other men, who are frequently tempted by Satan, as to brothers, as the Apostle teaches, Hebrews 4:15.
Fourthly, to show that future doctors, preachers, prelates, and apostles in the Church must first be tested by temptations, and be strengthened by prayer and meditation in solitary retreat, and there drink in a great spirit from God, which they might then pour out upon others. Those who are wise, therefore, first withdraw with Christ into this desert of prayer and meditation, and conversing there with God, they prepare and dispose themselves for the office of preaching, governing, and apostleship.
Fifthly, so that provoking Lucifer to a duel He might overcome him, and consequently his entire army of demons. Moreover, this duel of Christ and the devil is similar to the duel of the sun with the clouds surrounding it, with this motto: "Splendor from me." For the sun (so called because it alone exists in the world) is the eye of the world, says St. Ambrose in the Hexameron, day 4, the delight of the day, the beauty of heaven, the measure of times, the power and vigor of all the stars. So also is Christ. Just as the sun therefore scatters the clouds, so Christ scatters all the temptations of the devil. Again, just as the sun, illuminating dark clouds, makes them bright, so Christ by the splendor of His grace converts desolations into consolations, temptations into victories, battle into triumph.
Sixthly, so that by His temptation and example He might overcome our temptations, and teach us to fight and conquer the same enemy and antagonist, Satan, and might merit for us the grace and fortitude for this. For although the faithful, conscious of their weakness, should avoid temptations as much as they can, according to what Christ taught us to pray: "And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil," Matthew 6; yet when temptations assail us, it is necessary to resist them generously and courageously, relying on Christ, according to what Christ says: "Take courage, I have overcome the world," John 16:33. Whence St. Augustine on Psalm 90: "Therefore, he says, Christ was tempted, so that the Christian might not be conquered by the tempter." But, as the same says on Psalm 60, "so that by His conquering, we too might conquer." For, as St. Ambrose says on Luke chapter 4: "When you are tempted, know that a crown is being prepared. Take away the struggles of martyrs, and you have taken away their crowns; take away their sufferings, and you have taken away their blessedness. Is not the temptation of Joseph a celebration of virtue? Is not the injustice of prison a crown of chastity?"
Note: Luke, chapter 4, verse 1, says: "He was led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days, and was tempted" — in Greek peirazomenos, that is, suffering temptation — by the devil: from which some conclude that Christ, besides the three temptations of the devil recounted by the Evangelists, suffered many others during these 40 days, as well as after these 40 days, from Satan. Whence Luke adds, verse 13: "And when all the temptation was ended, the devil departed from Him for a time." So think Euthymius, the Author of the Imperfect Work, Jansenius and Cajetan here; Origen, homily 29 on Luke; Bede, book 1 on Mark, chapter 5; Eusebius, book of the Demonstration, chapter 7; St. Augustine, book 3 On the Harmony of the Gospels, chapter 4.
It seems, however, that Luke by "being tempted for days" or "suffering temptation" is chiefly referring to the three famous temptations of Christ which he then recounts; whence our translator renders in the imperfect tense: "He was being tempted"; for by this Luke seems to have wanted to give and preface by way of anticipation a kind of summary of the chapter and of the temptations of Christ, which he was about to narrate immediately after, as Francis Suarez rightly observes, III part, Question 41, article 4.
By the devil — namely by Lucifer; for he is the prince of all demons and is called the devil par excellence; and it was fitting that Christ should engage with this one; just as He had engaged with him in heaven, when He cast into hell the one who aspired to the hypostatic union and envied it for the future man, as some think. Lucifer therefore then came forth from hell, and having assumed the form of a holy man, says the Carthusian, he tempted Christ, both to discover whether He was the proper and natural Son of God, and to tempt Him, that is, to entice Him to sin. Thus "the devil" signifies Lucifer, the prince of demons, when it is said, Matthew 25:41: "Depart from Me, you cursed, into everlasting fire, which was prepared for the devil and his angels." And Apocalypse 12:9: "And that great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan," etc. Just as Lucifer therefore tempted Adam through Eve and conquered, so he also tempted Christ, but was conquered by Him.
Morally: here we are taught that the devil, when he foresees that someone will become an eminent doctor or prelate of the Church, is accustomed to attack him with various temptations, in order to cast him down and to crush and suffocate, as it were in the seed, the fruit of souls which he foresees that person will produce; thus here the demon tried to suffocate all Christians in Christ as in their seed and parent.
Verse 2: He Fasted Forty Days and Forty Nights
2. AND WHEN HE HAD FASTED FORTY DAYS AND FORTY NIGHTS, AFTERWARDS HE WAS HUNGRY. — Note: Christ, like Moses and Elijah, fasted for full 40 days and nights without any food or drink (whence Luke, chapter 4, verse 2, says: "And He ate nothing in those days") by a power not natural but supernatural, not received from without as with Elijah and Moses, but His own and intrinsic, namely divine, as the Fathers generally teach.
You ask for what reasons He did this? The answer is: The first reason was that He might prepare Himself by prayer and fasting for His imminent preaching and teaching office, and teach us to do the same.
The second, that by fasting and the resulting hunger He might objectively give the devil occasion to tempt Him, and by the same means arm Himself against impending temptations, and admonish us to arm ourselves. So St. Basil, homily 1 On Fasting.
The third, that by fasting and mortifying the flesh, He might make satisfaction for Adam who ate the forbidden fruit, and for all his descendants who indulge in gluttony and illicit pleasures.
The fourth, that by fasting as a preparation for contemplation, He might devote Himself for 40 days in the desert, and show that fasting is the instrument by which one raises the soul upward and strives toward heavenly things, says St. Chrysostom, homily 4 on Genesis.
The fifth, that He might teach us to despise bodily pleasures for the sake of spiritual delights; because through the contemplation of divine things and the joy that arises from it, the appetite for carnal pleasures is extinguished and the memory of food and drink is taken away. Whence Abbot John, as Cassian attests, Conference 16, chapter 7, was so nourished by the delights of contemplation that he did not remember whether he had eaten the day before.
The sixth and more important and precise reason was that He might inaugurate the Lenten fast to be observed by Christians from Apostolic tradition, and by His own example ratify and as it were consecrate it. So St. Ignatius, Epistle 7, and other Fathers throughout.
The reason was: First, that through this fast we might pay God, as it were, the tithes of the days of the whole year. So St. Gregory, homily 16 on the Gospels: "From the present day, he says, until the joys of the Paschal solemnity, six weeks come, whose days make forty-two, from which, when the six Sundays are subtracted from abstinence, no more than thirty-six days remain in abstinence. Now since the year comprises three hundred and sixty-five days, and we afflict ourselves for thirty-six days, we give God, as it were, the tithes of our year, so that we who have lived for ourselves through the gift received, may mortify ourselves for our Creator in His tithes through abstinence. Wherefore, dearest brothers, just as you are commanded by the law to offer tithes of your goods, so strive to offer Him also the tithes of your days, etc."
St. Ambrose gives another reason, sermon 34 On Lent, that just as the Hebrews through 42 encampments or stations in the desert entered the promised land, so we too through the 40 days of fasting may arrive at the desired feast and joy of Easter; for which reason Tertullian, Cyprian, St. Ambrose, Epistle 25 old edition, and others call fasting a "station." See more in Peter Bongus, On the Mysteries of Numbers, on the number 40, where among other things he says: "The pregnant bear, for 14 days, as Aristotle attests, book 6 History of Animals, chapter 30, book 8, chapter 17, remains motionless, without food, for forty days however, sustaining herself only by licking her right paw: she uses this remedy for intestinal illness."
Likewise the serpent, whose prudence Jesus commands us to imitate in the Gospel, when it grows old loses its roughness, and if it wishes to return to youth it fasts for forty days, so that its skin may be loosened, and so it seeks a narrow hole, so that while striving to pass through it may shed the skin of old age. But what is the old skin of the serpent, if not the evil and old habit of carnal corruption? Which if anyone desires to put off, he must chastise his flesh with the Lenten fast. So St. Jerome to Praesidius, On the Meaning of the Paschal Candle.
Bongus adds that chronic diseases are brought to an end in 40 days, for fevers usually cease on the 40th day, pestilence is cleansed by a quarantine of 40 days, and the same happens with other diseases.
Add that this fast before Easter, instituted in spring, contributes not only to the holiness of the soul but also to the health of the body, as Dr. Viringus, professor of medicine at Louvain, learnedly shows in his book On the Medical Fast of the Church; for in spring the blood and external humors boil up, which would produce fevers and other diseases, unless they are cooled by the abstinence of fasting and the coldness of fish.
Because therefore through the desires of the flesh we have despised the commandments of the Decalogue, it is fitting that we afflict the same flesh for four times ten days.
Mystically: St. Augustine, on Psalm 113, near the beginning, and others teach that the number forty of fasting signifies the whole time of the present life, destined by God for penance and the expiation of sins, by which we arrive at the Easter of joyful resurrection, and at Pentecost or the fifty-day period of eternal reward and glory.
Moreover, how rigorous the early Christians were, imitating Christ's example, in observing this fast, Baronius teaches, year of Christ 57, chapter 153 and following. Whence Lucian, in Philopatris, testifies that the early Christians were accustomed to observe the fast so strictly that they would pass ten days without food. Even more is what St. Gregory of Nazianzus writes to Hellenius about monks living in the solitude of Pontus, that many of them fasted for twenty full days and as many nights, abstaining from food, imitating Christ's fast by half, and he testifies that one of his own flock was among them. And St. Augustine writes to Casulanus, Epistle 86, that some in his time were found who had kept a continuous fast for more than a week, and he says he knew them himself, and adds: "That someone reached the full number of forty was assured to us by trustworthy brethren."
Indeed, that great Simeon Stylites, who for 49 or, as Baronius says, 80 years stood on a pillar day and night in the open air, passed the entire Lent every year without any food or drink, and he did this for 28 years, as Theodoret attests in his Philotheus, chapter 26, and others in his Life; he did this not by natural power, but by the supernatural help and grace of God, through which he became a wonder of the world and a prodigy of life. Some other anchorites and saints did the same.
AFTERWARDS HE WAS HUNGRY. — Therefore before this, during the full 40 days of fasting, He had not been hungry. Whence the opinion of Cajetan, who holds that Christ was also hungry during that time, Suarez considers rash, III part, Question 41, article 4, disputation 29, section 2. More mildly and therefore more probably, Francis Lucas opines that Christ during those 40 days of fasting felt some hunger, for the greater merit of the fast and as an example for others who suffer hunger in fasting, but not as great a hunger as after the 40 days, which would have driven Him to seek food. Therefore for Christ, as for Moses and Elijah during the 40 days of fasting, prayer and conversation with God served as nourishment and food for both soul and body; for while they were wholly intent on God, they were so nourished by His sweetness and efficacy that they did not feel hunger.
You ask whether Christ could have lived 40 days without food and drink, and without hunger, by the powers of nature? I say first, that this could not have been done by the powers of nature: physicians and experience teach this. For we observe that those who abstain from food not for 40 days, but for fewer days, die of hunger.
Symbolically: St. Gregory, homily 16 on the Gospels: "In this mortal body, he says, we subsist from four elements, and through the pleasures of this same body we transgress the Lord's commandments. But the Lord's commandments were received through the Decalogue.
The a priori reason is that, when nourishment fails, natural heat languishes and dies, just as the flame of a lamp, when oil runs out, languishes and is extinguished. A body so desiccated is also unfit for the soul to inform it and exercise its animal operations through it; for these require a certain balance of humors and of the four primary qualities, which is commonly called temperament: when this therefore fails, life and the soul in the body equally fail. Whence Francis Vallesius, physician to Philip II, King of Spain, chapter 18 of Sacred Philosophy, teaches from Hippocrates that a man naturally cannot live without food beyond seven days, and therefore God sent food to Daniel in the lions' den, who was without food for six days, on the seventh day through Habakkuk, lest he perish of hunger, Daniel 14:30. Hippocrates gives the reason, in his book On Flesh, that the intestine, lacking chylous moisture, hardens, and from this a man dies. Understand this of a healthy body with a good temperament; for some who are sick or of poor temperament, for example those in whom slow and viscous phlegm abounds and natural heat is weak, can live and endure for many days without food; for they are nourished from the body's juice and phlegm, which a slow heat slowly consumes — indeed in certain animals for many months, as in bears, who do not eat during winter, as Aristotle attests, History of Animals, chapter 17. Also in some sick persons natural heat is sometimes so dormant that the nutritive power seems to sleep. The same about bees, dormice, and swallows Aristotle teaches in the same place, chapters 14 and 16, and about serpents, chapter 15: "Many creatures of the sanguineous kind hide themselves, such as those covered with bark — I mean serpents, lizards, geckos, and river crocodiles. During the four coldest months they lie hidden: nor do they eat anything during that time." But nothing of this sort existed in Christ; for He had a body of the best constitution, supremely well-balanced, and therefore He was rather sanguine than phlegmatic, and so He could not naturally endure without food for 40 days.
You will object: Pliny, book 7, chapter 2, says that Indians at the sources of the Ganges live from the mere breath and scent of fruits and flowers. Rondelet also, book 1 On Fish, chapter 13, relates that someone lived for 40 years from the respiration of air. Roger Bacon narrates that an English girl passed 20 years of life in a similar manner. Simon Portius, in his book On the German Girl, reports that a girl from Speyer lived fasting for four years in the year of the Lord 1540, and that a certain French priest in Rome did the same for two years under Nicholas V.
But first, those earlier accounts, especially that some have lived or live from scent alone, are fabulous; for scent refreshes the brain, but does not fill the stomach. The other cases occurred either by divine power or by diabolical art, of which Blessed Prosper gives a remarkable example in the case of an Arabian girl, in Dimidium temporis, chapter 6. That girl from Speyer was afflicted with slow, viscous, and chylous phlegm, and from this she survived: just as Indians carrying the coca plant in their mouths, and Scythians the hippice herb, endure for twelve days in hunger and thirst. See Delrio, book 2 of Magical Disquisitions, Question 21, near the end, and the Conimbricenses on book 1 On Generation, chapter 5, question 7, articles 1 and 2.
I say secondly: a vehement and prolonged attention of the mind to other things, such as occurs in intense mathematical, philosophical, or theological speculation, likewise in earnest meditation, contemplation, and ecstasy, can indeed preserve a man without food for some time, but not for 40 days. The reason is that through deep speculation and contemplation the action of natural heat is partially suspended, so that it digests moderately and slowly. For when the soul exerts nearly all its powers in speculation or contemplation, it has little remaining to devote to digestion and nutrition. Whence we experience that in studious and contemplative persons the digestion of food is impeded. The same is clear from the respiration of the lungs, which is not felt in deep ecstasy. But these things cannot last for 40 days, for natural heat always acts. Therefore in Christ, contemplation alone could not have caused Him to live for 40 days without food. For contemplation and attention to heavenly things can indeed suspend vital and animal operations, but not natural ones, such as the action of heat on food or flesh, so that it would do absolutely nothing to them. So Suarez, in the place cited.
There is also another more important reason, namely that in speculation and contemplation the animal spirits are consumed; nor are they repaired from any source other than food: therefore one who speculates and contemplates without food naturally collapses at last from a failure of strength and dies.
I say thirdly: The fast of Christ, Elijah, Moses, Simeon Stylites, and similar persons for 40 days was supernatural, and came from a singular concurrence of God. For God in them either suspended the action of natural heat entirely for 40 days, or interiorly refreshed and strengthened them, or provided for them in another way, so that they might live healthy and vigorous without food for 40 days, just as He also causes Elijah and Enoch to live strong and vigorous without food for so many thousands of years in the earthly paradise, nourished by nothing but the spiritual delights of prayer and contemplation. Christ, therefore, fasting for 40 days, did not feel hunger, because His divinity preserved His body strong without hunger, and suspended the action of natural heat and of the other contrary qualities acting upon each other, weakening and corrupting each other, and interiorly supplied to the head and brain the strength and animal spirits necessary for the contemplation of 40 days. So Origen, Hilary, Jerome, Chrysostom, and from them Suarez, in the place cited.
HE WAS HUNGRY. — When God, who had previously prevented hunger during the 40 days of fasting by His concurrence, withdrew it, and allowed the body of Christ to undergo its natural action and passion, and He did this for these reasons: First, so that Christ might declare Himself to be truly man. For, as Chrysologus says, sermon 11: "To feel hunger and overcome it is a matter of human praise, not of divine power."
Second, so that by His hunger He might objectively lure the devil to tempt Him regarding gluttony and overcome him, just as military commanders by feigning flight lure enemies to pursue them, so that they may then overthrow and trample them; "so that the Lord's hunger might be a pious stratagem against the devil," as St. Ambrose says on Luke chapter IV — namely, that the devil, enticed by the appearance of hunger, might tempt Christ as a mere man, not knowing He was God. "He hungered," says a certain holy man, "the humble God-man, lest the enemy recognize the sublime man-God."
Verse 3: The Tempter Says, Command These Stones to Become Bread
3. AND THE TEMPTER CAME AND SAID TO HIM: IF YOU ARE THE SON OF GOD, COMMAND THAT THESE STONES BECOME BREAD. — Coming, that is, having assumed the form of a human body, as a man to a man, so that he might tempt Him by addressing Him with an external voice. For this temptation of Christ, just as that of Adam through Eve in the state of innocence, was done only through the external suggestion of a voice, not through internal fantasies, thoughts, and stirrings rising against reason and the spirit. For in Adam, and much more so in Christ, there was original justice, which subjected all movements of the soul and imagination to reason, so that no illicit thought, no movement of concupiscence could be aroused in Him by the devil, as is now aroused in us after Adam's sin; because on account of that sin we lost original justice and labor under concupiscence. So says Damascene, book III On the Faith, chapter 20, and from him the theologians generally. Hence St. Gregory, homily 16: "He could be tempted by suggestion, but the delight of sin did not bite into His mind, and therefore all that diabolical temptation was outside, not inside."
THE TEMPTER. — The devil, who is called "the tempter" par excellence, because among tempters he is not the only one, but the first and chief. For those err who think that every temptation is stirred up by the devil. For some temptations arise and are suggested by one's own flesh and concupiscence, others by the world, that is, by worldly and carnal men. Hence St. Augustine, or whoever is the author, in the book On Ecclesiastical Dogmas, chapter 82: "Not all our evil thoughts," he says, "are always excited by the evil instigation of a demon, but sometimes they emerge from the movement of our own free will." Chrysostom teaches the same, homily 54 on Acts: "Many," he says, "sin without the devil; he does not accomplish everything, but many things also happen from our own laziness alone." Yet the devil often stirs up concupiscence in us and its temptations, by representing desirable objects to the imagination and inflaming the sensual appetite to covet them. He likewise stirs up the world, that is, worldly and carnal men, to tempt us either by persecution or by enticing us to their vanities: hence par excellence he is called "the tempter."
First, note here the cunning of the devil, that he tempts each person in that matter toward which he is inclined, or in which he is weak. For just as bird-catchers set out various baits proper to each bird, and hunters set out various baits proper to each beast, in order to catch them; so too the devil sets before those inclined to gluttony delicacies and enticements. He sets before the hungry delicacies and enticements, as he does here for Christ; but before the satiated he sets idleness, sleep, and laziness; before the proud, honors; before the irascible, quarrels and brawls; before the avaricious, usury, plunder, unjust contracts, etc.; before the curious, magic, incantation, superstitions, etc. So St. Gregory, book 14 of the Moralia, chapter 7. See also book 3, chapter 19. This temptation of Christ took place on February 16, in the year of Christ 31. For the fast of 40 days, begun as January 6 ended and the 7th began, ended on February 13, and soon after, say February 16, He was tempted by Satan with gluttony and the other two temptations. See the Chronotaxis which I prefixed to the Commentary.
IF YOU ARE THE SON OF GOD. — The devil had heard the Father's oracle at Christ's baptism: "This is My beloved Son;" he had also heard the testimony of John the Baptist, that Christ was the Son of God; but because on the other hand he saw Him as a common, poor, weak man similar to others, therefore doubting whether Christ was the natural Son of God and the very Word of the Father, or merely an adoptive son, though preeminently so — in order to resolve this doubt, he tempts Christ and asks Him to convert stones into bread, by which He might relieve His hunger, so that from this miracle or inability to perform it, he might learn one or the other. For by the Word of God, just as all things were once created merely by speaking, Genesis I, so too by that same Word stones could now be suddenly and immediately turned into bread. If therefore Christ had done this, the devil would have believed Him to be the Word and Son of God.
For angels indeed can turn stones into bread, but not suddenly and immediately — rather gradually and mediately, by applying active agents to passive matter through many prior actions, alterations, and conversions. But if Christ had not done it and had said He could not, and that this was a divine work proper to God alone, the devil would have concluded: Therefore You are not the Word of God, nor the natural Son. It is the probable opinion of many theologians that Lucifer's sin and pride in heaven consisted in this: that when God revealed to him that the Son of God would assume human nature and commanded him to submit to Christ as man, he envied Christ — namely, that a man would be preferred over himself, who was the most noble angel, and would be assumed into hypostatic union with the Word. Therefore he sought that union for himself, and so rebelled against Christ and God. Consequently, seeing this man called the Son of God by the Father and John the Baptist, he wished to investigate whether He was the true Son of God, so that he might pour out upon Him his ancient envy, wrath, and indignation. So says Suarez. This was his torment, gnawing and corroding his proud soul; but he conceals and veils it under the covering of charity, pretending he wishes to succor Christ's hunger with bread. Therefore it is likely that the devil did not bluntly and abruptly say to Christ: "If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread," but first greeted Him kindly and insinuated himself through flattering words, saying, for example: "What are You doing here alone, my Lord? What are You contemplating? I saw You being baptized by John in the Jordan. I heard a voice descending from heaven upon You: 'This is My Son.' I would like to know whether You are truly the Son of God by nature, or only an adoptive son by grace, etc. I also see that You are greatly hungry from Your 40-day fast. If therefore You are the Son of God, relieve Your hunger and turn these stones into bread: for this would be very easy for You." Therefore it is less likely what St. Chrysostom says here, homily 13, that the devil wished to lead Christ into unbelief, as if saying: You heard at the baptism the voice: "This is My Son" — do not believe that You are the Son of God; or if You are, turn these stones into bread. For it would have been foolish to try to persuade Christ not to believe He was the Son of God, if He truly was the Son of God and knew Himself to be such. Yet at the same time, by this temptation the devil wished to lure Christ into a vain display of His power and into distrust of the help of God the Father, as if saying: Your Father for 40 days has forgotten You and has not sent You food; therefore look after Yourself and change stones into bread. Likewise to gluttony, by which he also tempted Adam and Eve. For the sin of gluttony here would have been to yield and obey the devil even on account of hunger — namely, to acquiesce to his persuasion and perform the miracle, turning stones into bread. For this is directly against religion, which forbids all commerce and consent with the devil; and indirectly against temperance: for what is directly against one virtue is also indirectly against another virtue in whose matter the act is involved. Therefore the sin of gluttony here would have been if Christ had procured food for Himself by an illicit means, namely at the devil's suggestion, through a miracle. Therefore Calvin erroneously denies that Christ was tempted regarding gluttony. Hear St. Gregory, homily 16 on the Gospels, where he teaches that Christ was tempted with a threefold temptation — namely of gluttony, vainglory, and avarice — because Adam had been assailed and conquered by the same: "He tempted through gluttony when he showed the food of the forbidden tree and persuaded to eat. He tempted through vainglory when he said: 'You shall be as gods.' And he tempted through the advancement of avarice when he said: 'Knowing good and evil'; for avarice is not only of money but also of exaltation. For it is rightly called avarice when loftiness is sought beyond measure." Then he shows that Christ was tempted by the same means but conquered: "Through gluttony he tempts when he says: 'Command that these stones become bread.' Through vainglory he tempts when he says: 'If You are the Son of God, cast Yourself down.' Through the avarice of exaltation he tempts when he shows all the kingdoms of the world, saying: 'All these will I give You, if falling down You will adore me'; but by the same methods by which the first Adam boasted of having conquered, the second Adam conquered him."
Symbolically: the devil here confesses that it is proper to Christ, as most generous, to convert stones into bread, and consequently that it is the office of the devil, as most avaricious, and of the Antichrist, to turn bread into stones. Hear the example that Baronius relates from Sigebert, in the year of Christ 605: "At this time a certain poor man, when he asked sailors for alms and did not receive any — the ship-captain saying: 'Stop asking us for alms, we who have nothing but stones' — the poor man replied: 'May everything therefore be turned into stones'; and whatever was edible on the ship was turned into stones, the color and shape of the things remaining the same." This miracle was wrought by avarice suggested by the Devil.
4. He answered and said: It is written: MAN DOES NOT LIVE BY BREAD ALONE, BUT BY EVERY WORD THAT PROCEEDS FROM THE MOUTH OF GOD. There is an enallage (interchange) of the preposition: "By every," that is, "from every word," as our Vulgate translates, Deuteronomy 8:3, which passage Christ cites here and with it, as with a shield, catches, repels, and shatters the weapon of the devil's temptation. In Hebrew it reads: "By everything that goes forth from the mouth of the Lord, man shall live" — that is, by whatever thing the Lord has commanded or ordained for the sustaining of life, man will live, be nourished, and be sustained. Thus He nourished the Israelites in the desert without bread for forty years by heavenly manna alone (for manna is the subject of Deuteronomy 8:3), and He nourished Moses, Elijah, and Christ here for forty days by His word and His power preserving nature. Hence Abulensis rightly says, on Deuteronomy 8:3: "If God commanded us to eat serpents, basilisks, stones, bronze, etc., we would be better nourished by them than by the most delicate foods, because God would convert them into excellent nourishment and food. Indeed, if He wished, we could live without any food at all, as He fed many persons devoted to prayer and contemplation and intent upon spiritual delights, to such a degree that they disdained all human food — as was evident in St. Catherine of Siena, St. Mary of Oignies, St. Lutgard, and the ancient anchorites." Thus He nourished the abbot John with the Eucharist alone, which he received on Sundays, for three years. Hence the Angel said to him: "Christ shall be your true food," as Palladius attests in the Lausiac History, chapter 61. Thus He nourished St. Mary of Egypt for nearly forty-seven years in the desert without earthly food, feeding her with tears and heavenly joys. Thus He fed Magdalene with angelic song alone, repeated seven times a day, of whom Petrarch sings: "Seven hours each day borne aloft, you were worthy to hear the angelic choirs singing alternating songs, from your bodily prison." Thus the great St. Sabas, says the author of his Life: "During the entire fasting period he fasted, touching no food at all, except that on Saturdays and Sundays he received the divine sacraments."
Mystically: every believer lives by every word, that is, by any nourishment of the heavenly word, says St. Ambrose, on Luke chapter 4, by which the soul is fed, and in comparison with which bodily hunger is to be disregarded. Hence by "the word of God" you may understand: first, Christ, who is the eternal Word of God, and having become man nourishes us with His teaching, grace, example, and with Himself and His flesh and divinity in the Eucharist; second, the words of Sacred Scripture, which feed the mind by illuminating and inflaming it; third, prayer and the inspiration of God — which last meaning our Salmeron here considers to be the literal, not the mystical sense, and to be signified here in the literal meaning.
Tropologically: St. Gregory, homily 16 on the Gospels, here admires the gentleness of Christ: "Consider," he says, "how great is the patience of God, and how great is our impatience. When we are provoked by injuries or some offense, driven by fury, we either avenge ourselves as much as we can, or we threaten what we cannot accomplish. Behold, the Lord endured the hostility of the devil, and answered him with nothing but words of gentleness. He bore the one He could have punished, so that His praise might grow higher thereby — if He overcame His enemy not by destroying him, but by patiently enduring him in the meantime."
Verse 5: The Devil Takes Him to the Pinnacle of the Temple
5. THEN THE DEVIL TOOK HIM INTO THE HOLY CITY (Jerusalem, in which alone was the holy temple of God and the worship of the one God, and true religion, says St. Jerome, epistle 150 to Hedibia, question 8) AND SET HIM ON THE PINNACLE OF THE TEMPLE.
The word "then" signifies that the devil, conquered by Christ in the first temptation of gluttony, immediately launched this second temptation of vainglory against Him. You will ask: How then does Luke, chapter 4, place this temptation not as the second but as the third? I answer: Luke here, as he often does elsewhere, disregarded the order of the temptations through hysteron-proteron, which Matthew accurately observes and assigns. Hence by saying "then" and "again," he sufficiently indicates that he preserved the order. And this is the fitting order of nature and of temptations, that from gluttony there should be a transition to vainglory. So say St. Jerome, Chrysostom, Hilary, and others. Thus even now novices in the faith and in religious life are first tempted by gluttony and the stings of the flesh; when these are overcome, the temptation of vainglory succeeds, as is evident from Cassian, Climacus, and others. For when the devil sees someone despising gluttony, delicacies, and temptations of the flesh, he stirs up against him a spiritual temptation of vanity and presumption; for carnal men are subject to gluttony, but the lofty and spiritual to pride.
The devil took Him. — The first opinion here is that of St. Cyprian, sermon On Fasting and the Temptation of Christ, who holds that this assumption of Christ by the devil was not real but phantasmal, that is, imaginary — like the visions shown to Ezekiel, and like the transferences of witches that often occur, when they seem to themselves to be carried by the devil to a banquet or solemn dance, though they are not really carried, but the devil deceives their imagination (as sleep deceives sleepers) so that they only imagine and dream it. But it is unworthy to believe that the devil so falsely deceived Christ's imagination, especially since the devil had no power over the interior of Christ. Hence this entire temptation of Christ was done only through an external voice, not through internal suggestion, as I said from St. Gregory at verse 3.
Second, Euthymius and Maldonatus think that Christ was led on foot by the devil to the pinnacle of the temple, and that this was done lest the devil reveal himself by carrying Him through the air. He "took" Him, therefore, meaning he led Him. So also Anselm and Origen, homily 31 on Luke. But from the desert and Mount Quarantania, near Jericho, where this temptation took place, it is a long journey to Jerusalem and the temple — namely eight hours, which can scarcely be completed in one day.
Third, and most probably, Christ was taken from the desert by the devil, that is, He was snatched through the air to the pinnacle of the temple. So say St. Jerome, Gregory, the Author of the Imperfect Work, the Gloss, St. Thomas (III, Q. 41, art. 4 ad 7), and others. For this is what the word "to take" signifies, and the Greek paralambanetai, and what follows: "He set Him on the pinnacle." Nor is it surprising that Christ permitted the devil to do this to Him, since He permitted Himself to be crucified by the devil's members (the impious Jews), says St. Gregory, homily 16. Nor did the demon reveal himself here, because as an angel of light he could transport Christ, or at least the devil did not much care about being revealed by this carrying, since he suspected and feared that he was already under suspicion, indeed fully known, by Christ. Hence in the third temptation, wishing to be adored by Christ, he plainly removed every mask of the angel of light and revealed himself and his satanic arrogance.
The Author of the Imperfect Work notes, and from him St. Thomas, that although the devil thus carried Christ so as to be seen by all — and this so that He would be thought to have dealings with a demon and to be a magician — yet Christ, without the devil knowing, acted invisibly so that He was seen by no one, either by preventing the visual species of His body (so that His body would not emit visible species from itself), or by not cooperating with the eyes of onlookers to produce the act of seeing His body, so that they would not see Him being carried through the air. Thus Christ outwitted the devil who wished to mock Him — both in this and in the very act of being taken up. For the demon thought that Christ, if He were the Son of God, would not permit Himself to be taken and snatched through the air by the devil, and from this he would learn whether He was the Son of God or not. But Christ, dissimulating and permitting Himself to be taken, frustrated the demon's expectation and left him in doubt. Therefore the devil undertakes to investigate this by a new temptation of casting Himself down. Hence St. Chrysostom judges that the devil thought Christ was unwilling and, as it were, unable to resist being taken and carried by him, whereas Christ could have resisted but chose not to, in order to deceive Satan.
HE SET HIM ON THE PINNACLE. — "The pinnacle," says Sipontinus, "is the top and summit of a building tapering to a point, either because the ancients called a sharp point a 'pinna,' or because a weather-vane (pinna) was customarily added to pinnacles, which by the easy motion of the winds indicates the direction of the breeze — the kind we now commonly call a pinnacle." Hence in Greek it is called pterygion, as if to say, "winged with a small wing." The pinnacle therefore tapers to a point, yet it has a certain flatness and width on which a man can stand on his feet, as we see craftsmen standing on such places when they repair roofs. On it therefore Christ could stand, or at least the devil held and supported Him on it.
It is likely that this pinnacle of the temple was the ridge, or summit, of the vestibule and facade of the temple (namely the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies — for this alone had a roof, since the court where the people gathered was unroofed and open to the sky), which rose like a tower above the entire building, one hundred and twenty cubits high, so that if Christ had fallen from there, He would have fallen into the court of the priests, which was in front of the Holy Place, between the vestibule just mentioned and the altar of holocausts. The devil therefore suggested to Christ that He throw Himself down from this pinnacle into the court of the priests, as if to say: Fall and show yourself to the priests and other worshippers, and to all the people (for the laity from their court would watch the sacrifices that were performed in the court of the priests); show, I say, by this miraculous fall, from which you remain unharmed, that you are the Son of the true God, whom all adore in this court and to whom they sacrifice. So say Francis Lucas, Toletus, and others. For Satan wished by this temptation to lead Christ into a vain display of Himself and His majesty.
Differently, Jansenius and Maldonatus note that the houses and temple of the Jews had a roof that was not pointed but flat like a platform, so that people could walk, dine, converse, and even sleep on it at night, as is clear from Joshua 2:6; Matthew 10:27; 4 Kings 23:12 and elsewhere. They add that this roof was surrounded on all sides by a parapet, a kind of wall, lest anyone walking there should fall off and be dashed against the ground — and this by God's command, Deuteronomy 22:8. They say it is likely that in this enclosure or parapet there were certain higher parts, for example at the corners, as we see in square walls, and that these were flat and broad enough for a person to stand on; and that on one of these the devil set Christ. These parts are called here "pinnacles," in Greek pterygia, in Hebrew kenaphaiim, that is "wings," because they projected and seemed to fly in the air like outspread wings. So say Angelomus, Eucherius, Lyranus, and Richard on 3 Kings 7.
Our Hieronymus Vilalpandus, however, in volume II on Ezekiel, part II, chapter 23, denies that such a parapet existed on the roof of the temple. "Therefore," he says, "what is said about Christ and James, the brother of the Lord, being cast headlong from the pinnacle of the temple either does not pertain to this almost infinite height of the temple, or was done by the demon and his minions, and was not permitted to others." He proves this first, because Sacred Scripture makes no mention of such a parapet on the temple. The proponents of the opposite opinion respond that Scripture mentions the parapet of houses, Deuteronomy 22:8, and the temple was like a house — indeed, it truly was the house of God. He proves second, because no one, not even the Levites, was permitted to walk on the roof of the temple: therefore it would have been pointless to surround it with a parapet or wall lest someone walking on it fall to the ground. The opponents respond that architects, sacristans, and craftsmen needed to walk on it in order to clean, repair, and polish it; therefore, lest they fall from it, they needed to be protected by a parapet. He proves third, because Josephus, book VI of the Jewish War, chapter 6, writes of the Temple and its roof: "Above it bristled with very sharp golden spikes, lest it be defiled by birds perching on it." The response is that these spikes were not continuous but placed here and there, yet in such a way that passage and standing room was available between them for craftsmen and others who came there. But the former explanation is both more certain and more genuine.
AND HE SAID TO HIM: IF YOU ARE THE SON OF GOD, CAST YOURSELF DOWN — so that You may show Yourself as Lord and God of the temple and altar, as of Your own house, to the priests and laity, and demand from them the right of adoration and sacrifice due to You.
With a similar temptation, as Cassian reports (Conference II, chapter 4), the devil assailed and conquered Heron. For when Heron lived on bread and water alone, the devil persuaded him that he was so holy, and so dear to God and the Angels, that they would catch him even if he fell from a height. He therefore threw himself into a well, and there the wretched man perished.
Morally: the devil, who fell downward from heaven into hell, also strives to send or drag others downward to the same. Therefore, when he impels someone to sin, he does nothing other than cause him to cast himself downward. Hence Christ said to the perverse Jews: "You are from below, I am from above." John 8.
Again, Christ, carefully concealing from the devil that He was the Son of God, blocked all his arts and stratagems; for He kept him in doubt and suspense, so that he did not know by what approach to attack and tempt Christ. Hence learn not to divulge the secrets of your mind, lest they be hindered by the devil. In wars, the key to victory consists in concealing one's own plans and discovering those of the enemy. Through frequent experience I have learned that heroic acts of virtue are easily accomplished if their purpose is kept secret in the mind and suddenly put into action before the demon can detect and disturb them. This is the art of outwitting the demon.
FOR IT IS WRITTEN: HE HAS GIVEN HIS ANGELS CHARGE OVER YOU (Luke, chapter 4, adds: to guard You) AND IN THEIR HANDS THEY SHALL BEAR YOU UP, LEST PERHAPS YOU DASH YOUR FOOT AGAINST A STONE. — He cites Psalm 90:11.
By "angels" here are properly understood the guardian angels of individual persons; yet any other angels can also be understood, whom God sends in various ways for the help and salvation of men. Hence Sts. Chrysostom, Jerome, and Hilary here, and Origen (homily 24 on Luke) and Nazianzen (oration on Holy Baptism), hold that the devil here falsely cites Sacred Scripture; for the Psalm in that passage speaks of mere men, not of Christ, who was God-man. For He did not have a guardian angel as other men do, because the guardian of His humanity was His own divinity.
On the other hand, St. Ambrose (on Luke chapter 4) and Remigius (on Psalm 90) hold that the devil did not abuse this passage of the Psalm, and that he rightly applied it to Christ; for although Christ did not have a specific guardian angel, He had all the angels obedient to Him and assigned to His service. Yet the devil abused it inasmuch as he twisted it to an evil purpose, namely to cast Himself down headlong. For God promised this guardianship and protection of the angels to the just who act prudently and piously, not to the rash, presumptuous, and those who tempt God — such as casting oneself from a height to the ground. Hear St. Bernard on Psalm "Qui habitat," sermon 14: "For what did He command? Precisely what follows in the psalm: 'That they may guard you in all your ways.' Surely not in precipices? What kind of way is it to cast oneself down from the pinnacle of the temple? This is not a way but a ruin; and if it is a way, it is yours, not His."
Morally: the same St. Bernard, sermon 12 on Psalm 90: "'He has given His angels charge over you': What wondrous condescension, and what truly great love of charity! Who commanded? To whom? About whom? What did He command?" etc. And after some things: "How much reverence should this word inspire in you, what devotion should it bring, what confidence should it confer! Reverence for their presence, devotion for their benevolence, confidence for their guardianship. Walk carefully, so that the angels to whom you are entrusted (as they have been commanded) may be with you in all your ways. In whatever lodging, in whatever corner, show reverence to your angel. Do not dare, in his presence, what you would not dare in my sight." And after several further remarks: "Therefore, whenever a very grave temptation is seen to press, and a violent tribulation is imminent, call upon your guardian in times of need, in tribulation. Cry out to him and say: 'Lord, save us, we are perishing.' He neither sleeps nor slumbers, even if he sometimes pretends to for a time, lest you more dangerously cast yourself from his hands, if you did not know yourself to be sustained by them."
AND IN THEIR HANDS THEY SHALL BEAR YOU UP. — This is catachresis (an improper use of a word), for angels do not have hands, but from time to time they assume hands along with a body. "Hands" therefore signify the help, power, and ministry of the angels, as if to say: You will feel the presence and assistance of the angels in every crisis, evil, danger — indeed in every fall and slip, however headlong — so that you seem to be carried in their hands. Thus St. Benedict, says St. Bernard, sermon 13 on Psalm 90: "While he seemed to hold his intent gaze in the splendor of a flashing light, he saw the soul of Germanus, Bishop of Capua, being carried to heaven by angels in a fiery sphere."
Verse 7: You Shall Not Tempt the Lord Your God
7. JESUS SAID TO HIM: AGAIN IT IS WRITTEN (Deuteronomy 6:16): YOU SHALL NOT TEMPT THE LORD YOUR GOD. — For he tempts God who asks from Him an unnecessary miracle, which is the case here — to sustain by the hands of angels one who throws himself headlong. For Christ could have descended from the pinnacle of the temple by stairs or ropes, as craftsmen descend: it was therefore not necessary for Him to throw Himself down. Therefore, by avoiding the precipice, He left the devil in doubt, so that from this temptation he could not learn whether He was the Son of God or not.
Moreover, in necessity it is lawful, in order to avoid a greater precipice, to throw oneself into a lesser one, if no other way of escape is available. For it is the part of prudence to embrace the lesser evil or danger over the greater, and to redeem the greater by the lesser. Thus many holy virgins, in order to escape the hands of persecutors who were trying to violate their virginity, when they could do so in no other way, threw themselves into rivers, preferring to die as martyrs rather than be violated as virgins. For the loss of virginity is a greater precipice than the loss of life; for the honor of the former surpasses that of the latter, as does the dishonor. So did St. Pelagia, the Antiochene virgin of fifteen years, with her mother and sisters, who, as St. Ambrose says (book I, On Virgins, somewhat after the beginning): "With persecutors pressing on one side and a rushing river blocking their flight on the other, shut in for the crown: 'What do we fear?' they said. 'Behold the water! Who prevents us from being baptized? And this is a baptism after which no one sins. Let the water receive us — water that makes virgins, that opens heaven, covers hell, hides death, and gives back martyrs.' Having spoken these words, with joined hands, as if leading a choral dance, they advanced into the middle of the stream. You could see the pious mother clasping their hands together: 'These victims I sacrifice to You, O Christ,' she said, 'guardians of virginity, leaders of chastity, companions of the passion.'"
Morally: learn here that the devil, just as he thrust the temptation of the precipice upon Christ, similarly thrusts horrible temptations upon Christians and saints, stirring up phantasms, blood, and melancholy, so that they experience the saddest, most terrifying, bloodthirsty, despairing, blasphemous thoughts, etc., which had never before entered their minds. Let them be consoled by the example of Christ, because God permits this for their greater humility, virtue, and merit. What therefore Scipio Nasica counseled the Romans — not to destroy Carthage once it was conquered, lest the Roman youth grow sluggish in the leisure of peace, but that Carthage, stirring up wars, should continually serve as a whetstone of virtue — the same may be said of the struggle that the saints frequently undergo in these temptations. Thus Paul, although he was most chaste and practically an earthly angel, was nevertheless constantly tempted by the thoughts and stings of lust: "Lest the greatness," he says, "of the revelations exalt me, there was given me a sting of my flesh, an angel of Satan, to buffet me. For which reason I thrice asked the Lord that it might depart from me; and He said to me: 'My grace is sufficient for you; for power is made perfect in weakness.'" 2 Corinthians 12:7. The remedy is constancy of soul, fortitude, and firm confidence in God, by which you may generously refuse any temptations whatsoever, however supremely monstrous, absurd, and abominable — indeed, despise and scorn them, and magnanimously persevere in the course and pursuit of virtue once begun. Once the demon confronted St. Anthony, complaining that all men cursed him. St. Anthony responded that this happened through his own fault and guilt: "Because you," he said, "vex and disturb everyone." The demon replied: "I accomplish nothing, because against the unwilling I have no power, but they themselves disturb one another; they themselves by their consent to my suggestion become the authors of their own evil." Therefore whoever does not consent to the tempting devil, but resists him, conquers and triumphs over him. With resolute soul, therefore, let us say in every temptation: "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? I am certain that neither death, nor life, nor Angels," etc. Romans 8 — and we have conquered.
Verse 8: The Devil Shows Him All the Kingdoms of the World
8. AGAIN THE DEVIL TOOK HIM TO A VERY HIGH MOUNTAIN AND SHOWED HIM ALL THE KINGDOMS OF THE WORLD, AND THEIR GLORY. — This mountain is placed by the describers of the Holy Land near the desert of Quarantania, where Christ fasted and was tempted by the devil with gluttony, and which they therefore call the mountain of the devil. Hear Adrichomius in his Description of the Holy Land, part 18, number 90: "The mountain of the devil is two miles from Quarantania. It is on the southern side of Bethel and Ai: Christ was led there by Satan, when he showed and promised Him all the kingdoms of the world, if He would fall down and adore him." So also Brocardus and Bredenbachius in their Description of the Holy Land, on whose authority this claim rests.
The devil transported Christ from the pinnacle of the temple and snatched Him through the air to this very lofty mountain, so that from it he might show Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory — namely the splendor of cities, the multitudes of nations, the beauty of lands, the riches of kings and princes, servants, garments, chariots, armies, palaces, triumphs, and whatever was beautiful and magnificent in any of them — so that He might covet them, and coveting, might adore the one who promised them. But no desire stung Christ's soul, inasmuch as He, free from all concupiscence, had a mind supremely composed and subject to God, and therefore despising all earthly things and aspiring to heavenly ones.
You will ask, by what means the devil showed Christ all the kingdoms of the world and their glory, and that in a moment, as Luke adds. Note: God alone can properly do this. First, God can strengthen, sharpen, and actuate the eyes and vision of a man, so that he may see any object however remote, even through walls and rocks, in itself without a visible species, just as He strengthens with the light of glory the mind of the blessed so that they behold God's essence without any species. Thus with his bodily eyes St. Anselm saw what was happening behind a wall, as his Life records. In like manner God can cause me here in Rome to see with my bodily eyes what is happening in the chamber of the King of China. Second, God can strengthen and multiply visible species so that they spread through dark and dense places, even those very far distant and remote. Third, He can produce species not by drawing them from the object but by Himself alone, anywhere. In this way God showed Moses from Mount Abarim the entire promised land, Numbers 27:12, and presented to the eyes of St. Benedict the whole world to behold in a single globe, as St. Gregory reports (Dialogues, book II, chapter 36). None of these things can the devil do.
How then did the devil present all the kingdoms to Christ's eyes? First, Origen and Rabanus understand these as mystical kingdoms, that is, the kingdoms of the devil, by which he reigns in some through anger, in others through pride, in others through gluttony, lust, etc. Hear Origen: "The devil showed Him innumerable multitudes of men who were held under his rule, and says to Him: 'I know You have come to fight against me and to take from my dominion those whom I now hold subject. I do not want You to contend, I do not want You to strive, lest You have any trouble in fighting. There is one thing I ask: fall down and adore me, and receive every kingdom that I hold.'" But this is mystical, not literal, and does not pertain to the matter at hand — namely the temptation of Christ concerning a corporeal kingdom proposed to Him.
Second, others hold that the devil flew with Christ through all the kingdoms of the world and thus showed them to Him in person. But this contradicts the text, which says: "Then the devil took Him to a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world." Therefore he showed them from the mountain at a distance, not up close by flying through the kingdoms themselves.
Third, St. Cyprian (treatise On Fasting and the Temptation of Christ) holds that this was done not by a sensible but by an imaginary vision — namely, that the devil presented all the kingdoms to Christ's imagination. But I rejected this above, at verse 5, where I said that this entire temptation was external, not internal, and that the devil could not alter Christ's imagination. Moreover, for this purpose there would have been no need to carry Christ to a high mountain, since the devil can deceive men's imaginations anywhere.
Fourth, Toletus (on Luke chapter 4) thinks that the demon by his own power conveyed the visual species of the most remote objects — namely of kingdoms — to Christ and His eyes, just as the blowing wind carries a voice farther than it could be heard without wind. But the demon could not convey so many and such great species, over such a distance and directly through intervening mountains, rocks, and forests, to Christ's eyes. Nor could he do this without the air in which species inhere; therefore he would have had to transport from all directions a great quantity of air imbued with these species to Christ's eyes, which would have been far too lengthy and laborious. Indeed, he could not have done it even with the air, since visible species do not pass through the air indefinitely, but are reflected from objects only to nearby objects. He could have done this only if he simultaneously brought the things themselves; for those images, just as in their coming-to-be, so also in their being preserved, depend on their object, as is established by clear experience.
Fifth, others subtly imagine that the devil, through many mirrors placed opposite one another, continuously reflected the images of kingdoms from one mirror to another, and did this all the way to Christ's eyes — by which art Socrates is said to have seen a dragon on a remote mountain devouring men, which no one else could see. In similar fashion we now behold the most distant things through a nautical telescope. But in this way the devil would have filled the entire air with mirrors, which would have impeded each other, nor would they have sufficed for seeing everything.
Sixth, therefore better is the view of the Author of the Imperfect Work, Euthymius and others, along with St. Thomas, III p., Q. XLI, art. 4, who say that the devil led Christ onto a high mountain so that from it he might show Christ the region and location of each kingdom, at least confusedly — for example, saying: "There lies Africa, there Asia, there Europe, here is Syria, there Italy, there Spain," etc. — and this in a moment, as Luke has it, that is, in a very brief space of time. But since from this mountain the devil showed Christ not only all the kingdoms but also their glory, add from Theophylact, Jansenius, and others that the devil, like a painter, represented images of all the kingdoms in the air which he had variously condensed, through various refractions of the sun's brightness, as happens in the rainbow, in a certain new manner, and as it were painted them, and caused that through them everything glorious and splendid in those kingdoms would appear and be presented to Christ's eyes. Just as the same devil, by a certain art of condensing, tempering, and coloring the air, painted many spectres of lions, wild beasts, serpents, and monsters, and cast them before the eyes of St. Anthony to terrify him, as St. Athanasius testifies in his Life. By a similar art magicians display wonders for the people to behold, which, although they are often an illusion of the eyes and imagination, are nevertheless sometimes real. And if the devil can paint these things in the imagination, why not also in the air? Thus various colors are painted in the rainbow; thus in the air, at the time of the Maccabees, military formations were seen fighting each other, and at other times other spectres. Hence Francis Lucas thinks the devil presented all kingdoms to Christ's eyes by the art of perspective, or optics, in which he is most skilled; or certainly by dazzling Christ's eyes with his illusions, Christ permitting and tolerating it, so that He might more nobly conquer and confound the tempter. Note here the power as well as the art and fraud of the devil, by which he often deceives Christians, painting in their imagination magnificent images of honors, riches, and pleasures, which in reality are either false and nonexistent, or small and worthless.
9. AND HE SAID TO HIM: ALL THESE THINGS I WILL GIVE YOU IF YOU FALL DOWN AND WORSHIP ME. — You may ask, how did the devil dare to propose so impious and unworthy a thing to Christ? The answer is, first, because he himself, ambitious from the very beginning, wished to be God, and envied Christ the man His divinity through the hypostatic union and sought it for himself. Ambition therefore and envy blinded him, so that he treated Christ, as if his rival, so unworthily. Second, because, having seen Christ now once and again declining to work miracles, he seemed more certain to himself that He was not the Son of God. Third, because from Luke 4:6, it is clear the devil added: "Because they have been delivered to me, and I give them to whomever I wish;" whence it is evident that he pretended to be the Son of God and God, says St. Hilary, and consequently worthy of worship. The devil therefore, emboldened by Christ's modesty and silence in allowing Himself to be carried by him to the pinnacle and thence to the mountain, becoming more proud and insolent, suspecting that Christ was not the Son of God but a mere man, demands from Christ, as from all other men, the honors of divinity which he had once sought in heaven. For this ambition of deity is deeply implanted and as it were ingrained in him, and it blinds him; and therefore he invented idols in which he might be worshipped, says the Gloss. Wherefore he pretends to be the Son of God, and as such desires to be worshipped by Christ, so that Christ, overcome by the desire to reign, might worship him and thus sin by idolatry: for Christ could easily have known (even if He had been a mere man, not God) that he was not truly the Son of God, but was pretending: yet at the same time the devil here tacitly probes whether Christ is the Son of God; for he reasoned thus: if Christ truly is the Son of God, He will be indignant with me, who snatches this dignity from Him and pretends to be the Son of God, and demands to be worshipped as such by Him; wherefore, angry and gnashing His teeth, He will answer: Whence comes this arrogance of yours? I am the Son of God, but you are Satan; it is yours therefore to worship Me; with what face then do you dare to demand that I worship you, who were created by Me and are subject to Me?
In the two prior temptations, therefore, Satan directly wished to probe whether Christ was the Son of God; hence he said: "If You are the Son of God;" but indirectly he wished to tempt Christ to the sin of gluttony and vainglory: in this third temptation, however, he directly wished to tempt Christ to avarice, ambition, and idolatry; but indirectly and tacitly to probe whether He was the true Son of God. Hence St. Chrysostom: "Having broken through the nets of the belly and vainglory, he sets the nets of avarice." And Remigius: "What great boasting of the devil, promising earthly kingdoms to Him who gives heavenly ones!"
Note the arrogance and pride of the devil when he says: "If you fall down and worship me." For he wants not just any kind of worship, but worship with prostration, so that Christ would so humble Himself before him as to fall on His face and worship him. So Abulensis here, Question XXXV.
Symbolically: the Gloss says: "He who is about to worship the devil falls before he worships. Again, the devil, because he fell from heaven, solicits all to his own fall and ruin, so that he may have companions." Hear St. Irenaeus, Book V, chapter XXII, pressing the point and falling. "The devil himself confesses that to worship him and to do his will is to fall from the glory of God." He therefore sells us vain honors at the cost of our ruin. Irenaeus adds: "Moreover, not even those things which he promised will he deliver to the one who has fallen."
Tropologically: St. Ambrose, on Luke chapter IV: "Ambition," he says, "has its own inherent danger; for in order to rule over others, one first serves, bows down, fawns, so as to be granted honor; and while wishing to be more exalted, he becomes more abased."
Luke adds, chapter IV, 6, that the devil added a reason and tried to prove his right over all kingdoms, saying: "Because they have been delivered to me" (by God, but he suppresses the name of God, both because it is hateful to him, and because he himself wished to be held and worshipped as God, with the true God excluded) "and I give them to whomever I wish," where the devil lies doubly: First, because it is false that God delivered all kingdoms to him; for in them the devil can do nothing except what God from time to time grants and permits; second, because it is false that the devil gives them to whomever he wishes; hence the devil did not intend to give them to Christ, nor would he have given them, even if Christ had worshipped him. For to the Lord alone "belongs the earth and its fullness, the world and all who dwell in it" (Psalm 23:1). Hence He alone "rules over the kingdoms of men, and gives it to whomever He wills" (Daniel 4:14). "His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all kings shall serve and obey Him" (Daniel 7:27), who, in verse 14, teaches that God delivered it to the Son of Man, that is, to Christ His Son assuming flesh. The devil therefore betrayed himself here, because this promise of his, as Toletus rightly observes on Luke 4:6, was mendacious, false, arrogant, and deceitful: mendacious indeed, because he did not intend to give what he promised; false, because he could not give the kingdoms he promised; arrogant, because he claimed as his own what was not his but God's; and deceitful, because he exchanges the future for the present: "I will give," he says; he wants to be worshipped in the present in exchange for a hope of receiving promises; for he deferred to a future time what he could not give, so that by accepting what the tempter wanted, he might deceive and confound the one who hoped. In like manner and by the same fraud the devil tries to persuade men to give their youth and present time to pleasures and to himself, but to give the future and old age to repentance and God, even though old age is uncertain, doubtful, and unsuitable for repentance, as St. Gregory warns and admonishes. Again he strives to persuade them to foolishly prefer earthly goods to heavenly, human to divine, perishable to lasting, momentary to eternal.
Note first: the order and gradation of the temptations; for the first temptation, that Christ should make bread from stones, was one of gluttony; the second, that He should throw Himself from the pinnacle of the temple, was one of vain ostentation and glory; the third, that He should worship him with the promise of the whole world's kingdom, was one of avarice, pride, and idolatry. Second, Christ was tempted through three, that is, all kinds of temptations, as Luke intimates, chapter IV, 13, saying: "When every temptation was completed, the devil departed from Him." For the first temptation of gluttony was the concupiscence of the flesh; the second of throwing Himself down was ostentation and pride; the third was equally of avarice and pride, as St. Ambrose and Origen note on the aforesaid passage of Luke. Third, Christ by His example and response taught us that the first temptation of the flesh and hunger must be overcome by hope in God and God's providence, the second of pride and presumption must be conquered by the fear of God, and the third of avarice and ambition must be driven away by magnanimity and contempt of the world. For this, St. Peter Damian suggests three effective spurs, Opuscule XI, chapter XVI, saying: "The conqueror of demons becomes a companion of Angels; the exile from the world is the heir of paradise; the denier of self is the follower of Christ."
Verse 10: Begone, Satan
10. THEN JESUS SAID TO HIM: BEGONE, SATAN. — So also the Syriac. The Greeks add opiso mou, that is, "behind me," and instead of "begone" they have hypage, as if to say: Away with you, withdraw, get out of here, impious Satan, do not any longer stand against Me as Satan, that is, as an adversary, do not appear before My eyes any more, go back behind Me; for I do not wish to hear or see you any longer, because you not only promise things false and deceitful, but you also demand of Me things impious, unworthy, blasphemous, and sacrilegious — namely that I who am your Creator should worship you, who are My creature, but a rebellious one and therefore condemned to hell. Jesus therefore said this, indignant with just anger at the devil and rebuking his wickedness; and therefore the devil, despairing of victory and confounded, fled: whence let Christians learn to firmly repel the suggestions of the devil and rebuke him, and he will flee from them.
FOR IT IS WRITTEN (Deut. 6:13): YOU SHALL WORSHIP THE LORD YOUR GOD, AND HIM ALONE SHALL YOU SERVE. — For "you shall worship," the Hebrew has tira, that is, "you shall fear"; for the Hebrews by "fear" signify reverence, worship, and every form of divine service. For, as Statius says: "Fear first made gods in the world."
The word "alone" is not in the Hebrew, but is understood from the article and pronoun "Him," which has emphasis, as if to say: to Him, to Him, I say, alone, inasmuch as He alone is the Lord your God, that is, your Creator, Preserver, Governor, etc.; "you shall serve" with latria (supreme worship), for the Greek is latreuseis. For to God alone is latria given; to the saints dulia (veneration), as St. Augustine testifies, Book X of The City of God, chapter 1; to the Blessed Virgin Mother of God, hyperdulia (highest veneration).
Morally: Christ here teaches that this is how we should respond to the devil in the temptation of avarice, and in any other. For every temptation tends to this and lures us to prefer a creature to the Creator, and to worship it as our idol — indeed the devil's idol — and to serve it above God. Thus the idol which the devil sets before the miser to worship is Plutus, Mammon, wealth, possessions, the kingdoms of the world; the idol of the proud is honor, ambition; the idol of the glutton is the belly, wines, feasts; the idol of the lustful is Venus. When therefore he presents these, we must answer with Christ: I worship God, not Venus, not Plutus, etc. For, as St. Cyprian says, treatise On Spectacles: "He casts himself down from the summit of his nobility who can admire anything after God." For what is the whole world, all kingdoms, all creatures compared with God, except a point compared with the whole universe? What is all time in respect to eternity, except an instant? What are all pleasures, honors, and riches compared with heavenly delights, honors, and riches, except vanities and shadows, indeed filth and dung? Despise therefore those things in comparison with God and cling firmly to Him, and you have overcome every temptation. Thus the Psalmist says: "To cling to God is good for me." And another: "My mind is fixed and established in God." St. Cyprian, On the Lord's Prayer: "Since all things are God's," he says, "the one who has God will lack nothing, if he himself does not fail God."
In like manner, if he threatens terrors, the fear of infamy, poverty, sickness, beatings, and death, unite yourself to God, worship God through firm hope and prayer. St. Cyprian, in his Exhortation to Martyrdom, teaches that some failed in martyrdom because they considered the savagery of the torments, not the power and help of God; on the contrary, those who stand firm and conquer do so because they turn their mind from the torments and fix it on God's help, saying: "I can do all things in Him who strengthens me;" God is greater than the torments. Thus St. Agnes, fixing all her hope and love on Christ, conquered all the torments of the tyrant; for God chooses the weak things of the world to confound the strong, and wishes to display His power in our weakness to the whole world; for God cannot abandon those who hope in Him, and who call upon Him and worship Him.
Wherefore St. Cyprian, treatise On Morality: "Adversities," he says, "do not call us away from the strength of faith, but strengthen us in suffering," etc. Having experienced this, St. Anthony, as St. Athanasius testifies, used to say that the best remedy for conquering all the devil's temptations was spiritual joy and love of Christ, at whose single sign of the cross the defeated devil fled.
Verse 11: Angels Came and Ministered to Him
11. THEN THE DEVIL LEFT HIM, AND BEHOLD, ANGELS CAME AND MINISTERED TO HIM. — The anonymous author in the Catena rightly says: "For the one who fights lawfully, the end of the contest is found when the adversary either voluntarily yields to the victor, or is laid low by a triple fall, according to the rules of the pugilistic art." For he who three times in a triple conflict conquers the enemy has clearly overcome and subjugated him and therefore triumphs over him. Note that Christ, after the threefold temptation and victory, returned from the mountain to which the devil had carried Him, back to His desert of Quarantana, where He had fasted for forty days, and this not on foot, but by a kind of sudden rapture through the power of His divinity and the gift of agility, or certainly through the ministry of Angels. For to Him as victor, having assumed the appearance of a human body (as the devil the tempter had also done), the Angels came, congratulated Him, and ministered to Him, bringing food and performing other offices of due service. Moreover, the Council of Constantinople, the Fifth Ecumenical, in the Constitution of Pope Vigilius pertaining to Collation V, against certain heretics who so interpreted that passage of Matthew IV — "And they ministered to Him" — as if Angels served Christ just as they served other saints, anathematizes those who maintain that Angels descended to Christ and ministered to Him as to a friend and member of God's household, not as to their Creator and Lord.
Learn from this that he who bravely conquers the devil and his suggestions merits and is rewarded with the companionship, consolation, and ministry of Angels. For the conqueror of Satan is like another Angel, and this so that through the Angels he may be encouraged for future combats with the devil; for, as Luke says here of Christ, chapter IV, 13: "And when every temptation was completed, the devil departed from Him until a time;" whence St. Chrysostom says: "The devil departed, driven out by the power of Christ," and afterward, says the Interlinear Gloss, "he was to fight through the Jews." For the Scribes and Pharisees frequently tempted Christ, and finally killed Him.
Hence Origen, Homily 2 on Luke, and Abulensis think that when a devil tempting with one vice has once been perfectly conquered by someone, he no longer tempts the same person with that vice. Our Salmeron says the same is probable, because one who perfectly overcomes in himself, through intense and heroic acts, the evil habits inclining to vice, generates and deeply roots the contrary habits of virtue; and the devil does not dare attack such a person, lest he be conquered again. It is more probable that the devil, once perfectly conquered by Christ or by Christians, departs only for a time, as Luke says here; therefore, given the occasion, he returns to tempt again with a similar or the same temptation. For thus he often tempted St. Anthony with the same matter, and St. Paul with the same sting of the flesh repeatedly and for a long time, as is clear from 2 Corinthians 12:8. For thus generals return to attack a fortress when after a long peace they find the enemy secure, negligent, and unprepared. "The devil," says St. Ambrose, "multiplies his darts, so as to conquer either by battle or by tedium." Hear the same St. Ambrose, Book IV, on Luke 4:13: "These three kinds of vices are rightly shown to be the sources of all crimes. For Scripture would not have said that every temptation was completed, unless in these three lay the matter of all offenses, whose seeds must be guarded against from their very origin. The end of temptations, therefore, is the end of desires, because the causes of temptations are the causes of desires. Now the causes of desires are the delight of the flesh, the appearance of glory, and the craving for power." And shortly after: "You see therefore that the devil himself is not persistent in his effort, and is accustomed to yield to true virtue. And even if he does not cease to envy, he nevertheless fears to press the attack, because he more frequently flees from those he has been triumphed over by."
Having heard the name of God, therefore, he departed, he says, until a time; for afterward he came not to tempt but to fight openly. Finally, after much more, he concludes: "Therefore He who wishes to give a crown suggests temptations. And if you are ever tempted, recognize that a crown is being prepared. Take away the struggles of the martyrs, and you have taken away their crowns; take away their sufferings, and you have taken away their beatitudes. Was not the temptation of Joseph a celebration of virtue? Was not the injustice of prison a crown of chastity? How could he have attained a share in the kingdom of Egypt, unless he had been sold by his brothers?"
Verse 12: Jesus Withdraws into Galilee
12. BUT WHEN JESUS HEARD THAT JOHN HAD BEEN HANDED OVER, HE WITHDREW INTO GALILEE. — Matthew, like Mark and Luke, omits and passes over in silence the delegation of the Jews to John the Baptist, asking whether he was the Messiah; likewise John's inquiry to Christ, asking through his disciples: "Are You the one who is to come?" In addition, the changing of water into wine at Cana of Galilee; the casting out of those buying and selling from the temple; Nicodemus's coming to Christ, etc. — all of which took place before the imprisonment of John the Baptist and are recorded by John the Evangelist alone, chapters 1, 3, and 4. Matthew therefore begins here Christ's preaching from the imprisonment of John the Baptist. For before his incarceration, Christ entrusted to him the office of preaching, so that John might prepare the way for Him. But when John was imprisoned, Christ succeeded him in preaching as the sun succeeds its morning star, and then He began to publicly and solemnly proclaim the Gospel, as Matthew here narrates.
Moreover, Christ, having heard of John's imprisonment, withdrew from Judea into Galilee, because He fled Herod, lest, as he had imprisoned John, so he would also imprison Him. In Galilee, therefore, He began to preach solemnly, so as to fulfill the oracle of Isaiah, about which presently. You may object: Herod reigned in Galilee, not in Judea; why then did Christ, fleeing Herod, flee from Judea into Galilee, where He would fall into Herod's hands? The answer: This happened because John, preaching and baptizing in Judea near Jericho, and gathering crowds to himself, was accused before Herod by the Jews, namely the Scribes and Pharisees; for they, having been sharply rebuked by John and called a brood of vipers (Matt. 3:7), were enraged and suggested to Herod, whom they knew to be offended at John, that he should seize John for fear of an upheaval, lest John stir up tumult and rebellion among the people; for Josephus, in Book XVIII of the Antiquities, chapter VII, teaches that Herod killed John out of fear of disturbance from the crowds flocking to John. Who instilled this fear in Herod, king of Galilee, about John preaching in Judea, if not the Jews, namely the Scribes and Pharisees? For they were hostile both to Christ and to John who pointed to Christ; for both publicly and freely exposed their vices.
For although by proper right John should have been handed over to the Roman governor, since he was baptizing in Judea, nevertheless, because he was also baptizing Galileans and perhaps occasionally crossing the Jordan into neighboring Perea, which was subject to Herod, therefore Herod, with the Roman governor's connivance and at the instigation of the Pharisees, imprisoned John as if subject to his jurisdiction. Christ, hearing this, fled from Judea by the Jews into Galilee, fearing lest He be handed over to Herod by the same Jews; for with him, since they belonged to the Jewish sect, the Pharisees had the greatest influence and were of the highest authority. But Jesus did not fear Herod himself, who alone ruled all Galilee, because He had not offended him, as John had offended him by rebuking him for adultery. This Herod was Antipas, son of Herod the Ascalonite, who was the killer of infants.
This was Christ's second withdrawal from Judea into Galilee (for the first was recorded in John 1:43), and it is the same as that recorded by Mark 1:14, Luke 4:14, and John 4:3 and 43, as Jansenius rightly gathers from the same circumstances. Moreover, Luke says: "And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee," not that some power of the Spirit was here imparted and added to Him by the Holy Spirit, as Origen seems to wish; for from the first moment of His birth He was full of the Holy Spirit, but rather that the power of the Holy Spirit, with which He was filled, impelled Him into Galilee to begin preaching there with great efficacy, and to perform miracles and other heroic works by which He was to confirm His preaching, as is evident here at verse 23.
13. AND LEAVING THE CITY OF NAZARETH, HE CAME AND DWELT IN CAPERNAUM, A MARITIME CITY IN THE BORDERS OF ZEBULUN AND NAPHTALI. — "Leaving," that is, passing by, neglecting, omitting, as if to say: Jesus did not wish to enter Nazareth, although it was His homeland, and begin preaching there. St. John gives the reason, chapter IV, 44: "That a prophet has no honor in his own country." He therefore withdrew to Capernaum, and there He established and fixed His chair of preaching.
Note: There were two Galilees, namely one in the tribe of Issachar and Zebulun, in which Nazareth was located; and the upper one, in the tribe of Asher and Naphtali, in which was Capernaum, which was also called "of the Gentiles," because it was near the Phoenicians and because it was inhabited by many Gentiles. For a great part of it had been given by Solomon to Hiram, king of Tyre, for the labor he contributed in building the Temple (3 Kings 9:11). See Adrichomius in his Description of the Holy Land, under Galilee.
CAPERNAUM, MARITIME. — For it lay near the Jordan (that is, where the Jordan flows into the Sea of Tiberias) and the Sea of Tiberias, which was also called the Sea of Galilee: therefore, by transporting and importing goods by sea, it became the most famous and wealthiest trading center of all Judea, and the metropolis of Galilee, so much so that in riches, splendor, luxury, and beauty it far surpassed the other cities of Galilee, and thence received its name. For it is called Capernaum, as if copher naim, that is, "field of pleasantness and delight," or "village of beauty," says St. Jerome in Hebrew Names, Pagninus, and others. But some interpret Capernaum as "field of repentance," or "propitiation of repentance," from caphar, that is, "to propitiate," and nacham, that is, "to repent": for there Christ preached repentance; for maritime cities, because of the flood of people flowing in from everywhere and because of trade, goods, and riches teem with many vices, as Plato also noted. Now Capernaum was made far more beautiful and illustrious by Christ's habitation; for Christ, leaving His homeland Nazareth, chose a dwelling for Himself in Capernaum, having a rented or lent house, it seems, in which during the time of His Gospel preaching He spent three years with His twelve chosen Apostles; and thence Capernaum was called His own, or His city. And for the same reason, Christ and the Apostles are frequently recorded by the Evangelists as having returned to Capernaum and their house.
In Capernaum, therefore, Christ began to preach the kingdom of God, to reprove the luxury and vices of the citizens, and to invite them from earthly goods, riches, and pride to heavenly riches, both through sermons and through many great miracles. For here, while teaching a packed crowd of people in His house, He first cured from sins and then also from paralysis, by His word, the paralytic who had been let down through the roof on a bed before Him. In the same place He restored sight to two blind men, and restored to health a demoniac who was mute. Here, walking in the street, He healed the centurion's servant of paralysis; He freed the woman with the hemorrhage, who touched the fringe of His garment with firm faith, from her flow of blood; and soon afterward, entering the house of Jairus the synagogue leader, He raised his twelve-year-old daughter from death by His word.
But when the inhabitants, swollen with riches and thence with pride, arrogance, and luxury, were moved to repentance neither by His heavenly words nor by His miracles, Christ finally thundered this sentence against them: "And you, Capernaum, who have been exalted to heaven, shall be plunged down to hell. Because if the mighty works that were done in you had been done in Sodom, it would perhaps have remained to this day. Nevertheless I say to you, that it shall be more tolerable for Sodom in the day of judgment than for you" (Matt. 11).
Verse 14: The Fulfillment of Isaiah's Prophecy
14. THAT IT MIGHT BE FULFILLED WHICH WAS SPOKEN BY THE PROPHET ISAIAH (chapter 9:1): 15. THE LAND OF ZEBULUN AND THE LAND OF NAPHTALI, THE WAY OF THE SEA BEYOND THE JORDAN, GALILEE OF THE GENTILES. — This is apposition, as if to say: The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, which is the way of the sea — that is, which turns toward and leads to the Sea of Tiberias — and which is situated beyond the Jordan, and by another name is called Galilee of the Gentiles; this land, I say, was relieved, as Isaiah adds, namely — as follows — the people dwelling in it beheld the light of the Gospel from the darkness of their ignorance, through Christ's preaching. The word "of the Gentiles" indicates that Christ would transfer the Gospel from the Jews, because of their unbelief, through Paul and the Apostles to the Gentiles. So Chrysostom.
16. THE PEOPLE WHO SAT IN DARKNESS SAW A GREAT LIGHT, AND UPON THOSE SITTING IN THE REGION OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH, LIGHT HAS RISEN FOR THEM. — I have expounded this oracle at length on Isaiah, chapter IX, 1. See what was said there.
17. FROM THAT TIME JESUS BEGAN TO PREACH: REPENT, FOR THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN IS AT HAND. — This was the sum, the compendium, the end, and the aim of Christ's preaching, namely to invite men to repentance, and to a change of morals and a holy life, so that they might merit to enter the kingdom of heaven, which was soon to be opened by His death. John the Baptist preached the same, as Christ's forerunner and precursor. See what was said on chapter III, 2. Christ therefore called men from earth and earthly desires — as worthless, petty, and perishable — to heaven, so that in it they might reign as kings with God and the Angels in all happiness and glory for all eternity. For this is true wisdom, this the end, this the goal, this the good, this our happiness. "For this is the whole of man" (Eccl. 12:14). Truly the Gloss says: "To the Gospel pertains the promise of beatitude, the remission of sins, adoption, resurrection, the heavenly inheritance, the companionship of Angels." By the Gospel, therefore, men are made kings, and a kingdom is given, says the Interlinear Gloss — not an earthly and perishable one, but a heavenly and everlasting one (Daniel 7:27).
Wherefore Babylas the Mime, who had two concubines, upon hearing these words of the Gospel read: "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand," was touched from heaven by God, came to his senses, and shut himself in a cell, to do penance for the rest of his life; and he left his wealth to his concubines who, pierced with compunction by his example, in like manner shut themselves in cells and performed continual penance. So John Moschus in the Spiritual Meadow, chapter 40. Indeed, the word of the Gospel is living and effective (Hebrews 4:12).
Fittingly did Christ preach these things in Galilee, both because Galilee was inhabited by Gentiles who resisted the Gospel less than the Jews; and because it was rich and populous, so much so that Josephus, in Book III of the War, chapter II, writes of it: "In Galilee the cities are numerous, and everywhere the multitude of villages is populous on account of its wealth, so that the smallest has above fifteen thousand inhabitants;" and because Galilee in Hebrew means "that which is turned" or "revolving," from galal, that is, to roll, to turn about, to revolve; Galilee was so named from the rolling waves or sands of the nearby sea, which on the shore are rolled and heaped together by the force of the tides and winds.
For in Galilee Christ turned around and reshaped the corrupted morals of men and as it were rounded them, so that like a globe they would touch the earth and earthly things only at a point; but being wound together in their whole remaining mass into a round form, they would look toward the round and well-turned heavens. Moreover, from Galilee, that is, from the instability of this world, He called men to heaven and the stars.
Again, Galilee means the same as "transmigration," says St. Gregory and others, from the root gala, that is, "he migrated." For in it Christ taught men to migrate in mind, affection, and love from earth and earthly things to heaven and heavenly things. Hence He chose as Apostles none but Galileans, that is, "transmigrants" (who would be strangers on earth and citizens of heaven).
This transmigration takes place through repentance. Moreover, how rigorous, long, and harsh the penance for sins once was — on bread and water for several years — is clear from the Roman Penitential and from the penitential canons of St. Basil, St. Gregory of Nyssa, Bede, Rabanus Maurus, and Burchard, which are extant printed together. Finally, among the Spaniards, the sick and dying performed penance by putting on the monastic habit and receiving the tonsure, by which ceremony they professed the monastic life; hence if they recovered, they had to live in the monastery for the rest of their lives and could not return to the world, as is evident from the Second Council of Toledo, chapter 2, and this Wamba, king of Spain, did with great example for posterity, around the year of our Lord 674, as is clear from Mariana and Baronius, volume VIII, year of our Lord 680, at the end.
For this reason, at Rome the papal penitentiaries carry a staff in their hand, both because they are apostolic judges in the tribunal of conscience — for a straight rod is carried before a judge as a sign of the rectitude of justice, according to that saying about Christ: "The scepter of direction is the scepter of Your kingdom" (Psalm 44:7) — and because in more serious and public offenses, especially those carrying attached excommunication, the penitentiaries formerly recited the psalm Miserere and struck the guilty person with the rod, and thus absolved him, as is still done from the ancient rite of the Church established in the canons, in solemn absolution from excommunication.
Thus St. Anno, Archbishop of Cologne, afflicted Emperor Henry II as a penitent with the harshest blows of rods, in the year of our Lord 1056, as his Life in Surius relates, December 4. And this use of rods, or what is commonly called "discipline," inflicted either by the penitent on himself or by the penitentiary on the penitent, greatly flourished in the time of Blessed Peter Damian, who lived around the year of our Lord 1040, as is evident from several of his letters and from the Life of St. Dominic Loricatus, where he says that a hundred years' penance could be performed by reciting the entire psalter twenty times with continuous flagellation, for one such psalter completed five years of penance. Likewise Henry II, King of England, because he had given occasion for the murder of St. Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury, came as a penitent with bare feet to the tomb of St. Thomas, and prostrated on the ground at the place of his murder, confessed his crime with tears at the feet of the bishops, bared his shoulders and received five flagellations from them; and from each of the monks, who numbered eighty, he received three blows of discipline, in the year of our Lord 1170. What do we, being delicate, say to this? Where has the penance of the ancients gone?
Let us hear what St. Jerome writes about St. Paula in her epitaph: "She had no bedding for her little couch, but rested on haircloth spread on the hardest ground; if indeed that rest should be called rest, in which she joined days and nights with almost continual prayers, fulfilling that psalm: 'I will wash my bed every night, I will water my couch with my tears'; you would have thought there were fountains of tears. She so lamented her light sins that you would have believed her guilty of the gravest crimes. And when she was more frequently admonished by us to spare her eyes and preserve them for the reading of the Gospel, she would say: 'That face must be disfigured which, against God's commandment, I often painted with rouge, and white lead, and antimony. That body must be afflicted which indulged in many pleasures. Long laughter must be compensated by perpetual weeping. Soft linens and most precious silks must be exchanged for the roughness of haircloth. I who pleased a husband and the world now desire to please Christ.'" See the same author, epistle 30, graphically describing the remarkable penance of Fabiola.
Verse 18: The Calling of Peter, Andrew, James, and John
18. AND JESUS, WALKING BY THE SEA OF GALILEE, SAW TWO BROTHERS, SIMON, WHO IS CALLED PETER, AND ANDREW HIS BROTHER, CASTING A NET INTO THE SEA (FOR THEY WERE FISHERMEN). 19. AND HE SAID TO THEM: COME, FOLLOW ME, AND I WILL MAKE YOU FISHERS OF MEN. 20. AND THEY IMMEDIATELY LEFT THEIR NETS AND FOLLOWED HIM.
Note, as regards the series of events, that much must here be supplied from St. John, chapter 1, namely that after Christ's baptism received from John, and after His fast of forty days in the desert and the threefold temptation of Satan, the Jews sent envoys to John the Baptist to ask him whether he himself was the Christ. John answered that he was not the Christ. The next day Jesus came again to John, and then John said to the crowds concerning Him: Behold, this is the Christ. Having heard this, two of John's disciples went over to Jesus, one of whom was Andrew, who immediately brought his brother Simon Peter to Christ; and soon Christ called Philip, who brought Nathanael along with him to Christ, so that Christ now had five disciples just named, who were present with Him at the wedding in Cana of Galilee; the same men, soon leaving Christ, returned to their fishing.
Thence Jesus returned to Judea, where He had His conversation with Nicodemus, which John records in chapter 3, and there He baptized and worked miracles, by which as He was becoming famous, fearing the envy of the Scribes and Pharisees, by whose accusation John the Baptist had already been seized by Herod, He returned again to Galilee, and there He called Peter and Andrew, James and John, as Matthew here narrates. Therefore John alone narrates the events of the first year of Christ's preaching; but Matthew, Luke, and Mark begin from the second year of His preaching, which was the 32nd year of Christ's age, when He gathered the Apostles.
Hence it is clear that this calling of Peter and Andrew is different from the one which John records in chapter 1:36. For there Andrew, not yet by John the Baptist, after the capture of John, he was sent with his companion to Christ, and began to know Him intimately; yet he did not attach himself as a permanent disciple, but returned to his nets. But here, after John was now imprisoned, Andrew and Peter, called by Christ, gave themselves to Him as disciples and adhered to Him constantly, and no longer returned to their own affairs. This is therefore the second calling of the Apostles. A third calling is added by St. Augustine, Lyranus, Maldonatus, and Toletus, namely the one in which, after the miraculous catch of fish, having been called by Christ, they devoted themselves entirely to Him, as Luke recounts in chapter 5, verse 10.
But it is more true that the calling found in Luke is the same as this one in Matthew: both because Peter and Andrew seem to have been called and moved to follow Christ inseparably only after seeing that miracle in the catch of fish, about which Luke speaks; and because Luke, equally with Matthew, says they followed Christ having left all things, which indeed seems to be understood absolutely; nor is it likely that, once they had been fully and completely called and had followed Christ, they again fell away from Him and quasi-apostatized, so that they would have needed to be called a third time in Luke. Finally, "I will make you fishers of men" is plainly the same as what Christ said to Peter in Luke: "From now on you will be catching men." Therefore the calling of the Apostles recounted by Matthew and Luke is the same, but Matthew briefly assigns the substance of the calling and covers it as if in summary; while Luke, in his customary manner, narrates the sequence and history in detail and at length, as Jansenius demonstrates thoroughly and precisely through each point in chapter 26 of the Concordia Evangelistarum. So hold St. Chrysostom, Theophylactus, Euthymius, and others. Now let us examine each word.
"Walking" — not by chance, nor for recreation, but in order to call Peter and Andrew, James and John, to follow Him. For Christ exercised neither walking nor any other action for the sole sake of nature or recreation, but directed all things to a spiritual end, namely to the glory of God and the salvation of others. Let Christians imitate this, especially priests and religious; thus they will do nothing idle, but everything fruitful.
"By the Sea of Galilee" — next to which lies the city of Capernaum, where Christ had chosen a home for preaching at home to His disciples, and in the synagogues on Sabbaths to all Jews. This sea is called by another name Tiberias, and also the lake or pool of Gennesaret.
"Simon, who is called Peter" — who was called by Christ Cephas, that is, Rock or Peter, John 1:42, because upon him He was going to build His Church, Matthew 16:18. Simon in Hebrew means the same as "hearing" or "obeying"; for shama means to hear, to obey. See what was said on Genesis 29:33.
Andrew is a Greek name, which the Jews received from the Greeks, to whom they were subject after Alexander the Great, just as they received Jason, Eupolemus, Lysimachus, Menelaus, and many other Greek names of Jews, which are read in 2 Maccabees 4 and following. For Andreas in Greek means the same as manly, robust, strong — such as St. Andrew truly was on the cross.
"Casting a net into the sea." — Supply from Luke 5:1ff. that Christ had boarded the little boat of Peter, and from there had taught the crowds, and soon had commanded Peter to cast the net into the sea, where he immediately drew in an immense quantity of fish, so that the net was breaking; by which miracle he was converted to Christ together with Andrew, James, and John, who all devoted themselves entirely to Christ. Then therefore Christ called these four disciples, both by voice, saying: "Come after Me, and I will make you fishers of men," as Matthew says here; and by the miraculous catch of fish, as Luke teaches. This calling of the Apostles seems to have occurred in the first year of Christ's preaching as it was drawing to its end, that is, in the 32nd year of Christ's age, in February, or at the beginning of March before Passover, as I said in the Chronotaxis.
"Come after Me" — that is, follow Me and My way of the Apostolic life, so that having left the occupation of fishing and every human office, you devote yourselves entirely with Me to perfection and to Evangelical preaching. For I will exchange your occupation for one far better and more divine. For I will make you fishers not of fish, but of men. For Christians are like fish swimming in the water of baptism. This is the ship of the Church of Christ in which we sail to heaven. I reviewed nineteen analogies between fish and men at Habakkuk 1:14, which see if you wish.
Hence Christ was called by the ancients ichthys, that is, "fish": whence the initial letters of the name IESOUS yield by acrostic this sentence: Iesous Christos Theou Huios Soter, that is, Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior. Concerning this there exists the poem of the Erythraean Sibyl, found in St. Augustine, book 18 of The City of God, chapter 23; Tertullian, On Baptism; and Prosper, part 2 of the Predictions, chapter 39. St. Luke says Christ said to Peter: "From now on you will be catching men," in Greek zogron, that is, catching alive, or catching for life. St. Ambrose translates it as "giving life," as if to say: Fishermen catch fish for death, namely to kill and eat them; but you, O Peter, together with the other Apostles, will catch men for life, so that they may die to the old life by which they lived in sins, and begin a new life by which they live in holiness for God, according to Romans 6: "Consider yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus." And Colossians 3: "You have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God."
St. Augustine says excellently, in Tract. 7 on John: "Christ, wishing," he says, "to break the necks of the proud, did not seek a fisherman through an orator, but from a fisherman He gained an emperor. The great Cyprian was an orator, but Peter the fisherman came first." Indeed, Christ through fishermen converted orators, emperors, and all the princes of the world. This was the miracle of miracles and a work proper to God. Whence Jeremiah, foreseeing and foretelling this, says in chapter 16:16: "Behold, I will send many fishermen, says the Lord, and they will fish for them." This is what Paul admires in 1 Corinthians 1, saying: "Consider your calling, brothers, that not many are wise according to the flesh, not many powerful, not many noble; but God chose the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and God chose the weak things of the world to confound the strong," etc. He adds the reason: "That no flesh should glory in His sight," but "let him who glories, glory in the Lord." See what was said there.
"But they immediately left their nets and followed Him." — So great was the power of the miracle of the catch of fish and of the voice of Christ calling them as Apostles, both outwardly saying: "Come after Me," and even more inwardly striking their minds with His grace. For these chief Apostles, upon hearing this, immediately exchanged their boat and nets for the house and school of Christ, and their desire for fish and profit for zeal for souls. Thus here the sea becomes the land; the boat, the Church; the fish, men wandering and straying on earth, as fish in the vast sea.
"Having left their nets." — Under "nets" understand the boat, house, the occupation of fishing, servants, parents, relatives, household members, and all other things, according to that saying of St. Peter to Christ: "Behold, we have left all things and followed You; what then will there be for us?" Matthew 19:27. Therefore when, after Christ was killed, these Apostles are read to have applied themselves to fishing, John 21:3, it was not with the intention of resuming the fishing profession, but to pass the time and to refresh their minds, afflicted by the death of Christ, with this old occupation. Let those who are called by Christ to the apostolate, to heroic acts, to the perfect and religious life, imitate this example of the Apostles, so that having left parents, homes, wealth, etc., they immediately follow Him, anxious about nothing, but resigning all their cares to Christ who calls them. For Christ will provide abundantly for them in all these things, and will repay the hundredfold that He promised in Matthew 19.
St. Bernard wisely says to those who tremble at following God when He calls them to difficult things: "What do you fear?" he says, "What do you doubt? The Angel of great counsel calls you, than whom no one is wiser, no one stronger, no one more faithful."
Tropologically, the Scholiast, on Mark chapter 1, in St. Jerome, says: "We must leave behind the spider-webs by which we were held like gnats, namely the vanities of the world."
21. "And going on from there, He saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in a boat with Zebedee their father, mending" (in Greek katartizontas, that is, repairing, restoring) "their nets" (broken or damaged), "and He called them."
James — in Hebrew means the same as "supplanter," as is clear from Genesis 25:26; for he supplanted the world and all worldly things in order to follow Christ.
Zebedee — means the same as "subduing," "generous," "munificent"; for he, already an old man, freely offered and gave to Christ his two sons, who were the staff of his old age. For zabad means to give, to bestow, to endow.
John — John means the same as "grace of God," for Christ poured this out abundantly upon John above the other Apostles. "By this chariot-team of four Apostles," says an Anonymous author, "we are carried to the heavens. Upon these four corners the first Church is established." Indeed, Peter by his example warns us to obey Christ immediately when He calls; Andrew to pursue the calling manfully; James to supplant adversaries; John to frequently implore God's grace for accomplishing these things.
22. "But they immediately left their nets" (in Greek and Syriac, instead of "nets" it reads "boat") "and their father, and followed Him." — Moved both by the voice of Christ and by the miracle of the catch of fish in Peter's boat: for they, as partners of Peter, had helped him in hauling in the net with so many fish, as Luke says in 5:9.
Note: Luke, in chapter 5:11, rolls the calling of these four Apostles into one, and covers it in a single sentence, saying of all of them: "And having brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed Him." But Matthew unfolds it and narrates it in detail, assigning a twofold calling: the first of Peter and Andrew; the second of James and John. For this is the sequence of events: Christ, carried in Peter's boat and teaching the crowds, put in to shore, and there called Peter and Andrew, saying: "Come after Me." Then, advancing a little further, He saw James and John, partners of Peter and Andrew, mending both Peter's net already torn from the catch of so many fish and their own nets, and there He called them, saying: "Come after Me." They, roused by this voice and moved by the miracle of the catch of fish at which they had been present, and invited by the example of Peter and Andrew, joining themselves to them, immediately left their father and everything and followed Christ. So from St. Augustine, book 2 of On the Harmony of the Evangelists, chapter 17; Jansenius; Franciscus Lucas; and others.
Verse 23: Jesus Goes About All Galilee, Teaching and Healing
23. "And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom, and healing every disease" (in Greek noson, that is, a disease already habitual, says Euthymius, and deep-rooted, even incurable) "and every infirmity" (in Greek malakian, that is, softness, languor, a failing of strength, weariness, which is usually a harbinger of disease) "among the people."
Christ did this both so that by these miracles He might confirm His Gospel and the new and unheard-of law that He was bringing into the world; for Jesus "secured authority for Himself and His mission by the brilliance of His signs," says St. Chrysostom; and also so that through the health of the body He might heal the soul. For those healed in body, on account of this benefit and miracle, believed and gave themselves to Christ. "The Gospel of the Kingdom" is the joyful message concerning the Kingdom of Heaven, which was about to be opened through the death of Christ, and concerning the way and manner of entering it and actually attaining it; for Christ preached both continuously and unceasingly, not carried on horse or chariot, but going on foot, traveling around all the cities and villages of Galilee. Marvel here at Christ's tireless zeal for preaching, and at His Evangelical — indeed Angelic — labors, and imitate them.
24. "And His fame" (in Greek akoe, that is, hearing, rumor, report) "went throughout all Syria, and they brought to Him all who were ill with various diseases and torments" (in Greek basanois, that is, torments, tortures, which are similar to those suffered by those who are stretched and tortured on the rack: for basanos is properly the inquisition by which the accused is tortured on the rack, so that he may confess the crime and accomplices in the crime) "who were seized, and those who had demons" (demoniacs, those obsessed and possessed by demons) "and lunatics and paralytics, and He healed them."
Lunatics are sick persons who are subject to the moon and its phases, so that according to them they are worse off, or become delirious and insane. Hence the Arabic version translates: "And those who were agitated at the beginnings of the lunar phases." "Lunatics," says Apuleius, "are those who suffer the course of the moon, namely those upon whom the moon acts; for the moon has dominion over moist things and over those who have a moist and weak brain. Hence at the new moon and full moon it increases and stirs up the humors, namely phlegm and melancholy, and thus disturbs the brain and drives it into delirium, mania, and frenzy. Such are especially the epileptics, who suffer from the comitial disease (by which those are said to be afflicted who were born during the interlunar period, that is, between the waning moon and the new moon, although Valesius denies this in Sacred Philosophy, chapter 71); or those who are burdened and agitated by insanity or some other kind of disease at certain times of the moon. In this evil the demon often mixes himself in, and afflicts such persons more severely by further stirring up the humors, especially both biles — the black as well as the yellow, that is, melancholy and choler — indeed the demon himself sometimes procures and produces this evil, as will be evident in chapter 17, verses 17 and 18.
"For the demon," says the Gloss, "observes the times of the moon, so as to defame the creature to the blasphemy of the Creator; and so that through the humors stirred up by the moon he may more greatly disturb the imagination, and tempt and vex people with sad and choleric phantasms, and thereupon drive them to despair and to bringing death upon themselves."
"And He healed them." — "He did not require faith from any of these," says St. Chrysostom, for He had not yet demonstrated His power, and those coming from afar still had but little faith in Him; but afterward He required faith from the sick, as will be evident in what follows. "Certain clouds of signs," says Chrysostom, "Matthew passes over in a few words, some of which he will later narrate more distinctly and at greater length."
Mystically: lunatics are the fickle, changeable, and inconstant, who now serve God and piety, now the devil and their lusts, according to the saying: "A holy man remains in wisdom like the sun, for a fool changes like the moon." Ecclesiasticus 27:12. See what was said there.
25. "And great crowds followed Him from Galilee, and the Decapolis, and from Jerusalem, and from Judea, and from beyond the Jordan." — "Many followed Christ," says the Gloss, "some on account of heavenly things, some for healing, some led by fame and curiosity, others through envy, wishing to criticize and accuse Him in something." St. Bernard gives the reason in Sermon 1 On All Saints, saying: "The crowds from the cities and towns followed the Lord as He preached, whose souls He was saving and whose bodies He was healing, and they clung to Him, delighted equally by His speech and His appearance, whose voice was indeed sweet and face beautiful, as it is written: 'Beautiful in form above the sons of men, grace is poured out upon Your lips.' Such is He whom we follow, to whom we cling, wholly desirable, upon whom not only the peoples, but even the holy Angels themselves desire to gaze."
"The Decapolis" — Decapolis is a region not of ten tribes, as the Interlinear Gloss has; but of ten cities. For deka means ten, and polis means city. The names of these ten cities, according to Brochard and Adrichomius, are: Tiberias, Sephet, Hazor, Kedesh, Caesarea Philippi, Capernaum, Jotapata (over which Josephus presided when fighting against the Romans and Titus), Bethsaida, Chorazin, Beth-shean, also called Scythopolis.
"And from beyond the Jordan" — that is, from the regions situated beyond the Jordan with respect to Galilee, which was on this side of the Jordan, where Christ was preaching — such as Gilead, Trachonitis, Abilene, Seir, Coele-Syria, and Batanaea, formerly called Bashan, which was the domain of King Og. For the Syrians and Chaldeans often change the Hebrew Shin to Tau, so that instead of Bashan they say Batan; instead of shelosha, telata, meaning three; instead of shabar, tebar, meaning "he broke"; instead of shub, tub, meaning "he returned"; instead of shor, tor, meaning "ox." Further beyond lay the threefold Arabia, namely Felix, Petraea, and Deserta. From all these regions many, stirred by the fame of Christ's teaching and miracles, flocked to Him and accompanied Him everywhere.