Homilies on Joshua, Homily 6

Those who were not obedient to the commandments of the Lord are called uncircumcised. From this it is understood that those are called uncircumcised who do not obey the commandments of the Lord. And yet, because God loves every soul, he does not wholly abandon either the circumcised or the uncircumcised. For he sent Jesus to circumcise all together, the worthy and the unworthy — not Jesus the son of Nun, for he did not circumcise the people with a true and perfect circumcision, but Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. He is the one who has truly taken away and cut off from us the pollution of the flesh, and purged the defilements of sins from our heart and soul. Listen, then, to what Scripture says of those who were prefigured through the son of Nun: “And the sons of Israel, when they had been circumcised,” it says, “rested in the same place, staying in the camp until they were healed; and then the Lord said to Jesus: This day I have taken away the reproach of Egypt from you.” For it is not enough for us to be circumcised; we must also be healed after circumcision, that is, until a scar closes over the wound of the circumcision itself. When, then, does the scar close over the wound of our circumcision? I think that to be circumcised by our Jesus is this: to lay aside our former practices, to cut off foul and disordered habits and whatever is repugnant to the rule of decency and piety. But when we do this at the beginning, we are hampered in a way by the very difficulty of what is new, and as if with a certain labor and pain of mind we change the faults of old habit by new instruction. And therefore, as I said, there is a certain difficulty at the beginning, so that we can cut off the old habits and take up the new ones only with difficulty and pain. This, then, seems to me to be the time in which we are said to stay as in the pain of our circumcision, until the scar closes and we are healed. And the scar closes when we now carry out the new practices without difficulty, and what formerly seemed unaccustomed and hard turns into habit for us. And then we are truly said to be healed, when, free of vices, we turn the virtues into nature by new practice. And so at last the divine word rightly says to us what follows: “This day I have taken away the reproach of Egypt from you”; because after the reproach of Egypt was taken away, then it is said: “And the sons of Israel kept the Passover on the fourteenth day of the first month.” For they could not keep the Passover before circumcision, nor eat the flesh of the lamb immediately after circumcision, before they were healed. But after they were healed, it is said that the sons of Israel kept the Passover on the fourteenth day of the month. You see, then, that no one unclean keeps the Passover, no one uncircumcised, but whoever is clean and circumcised, as the Apostle too interprets it, saying: “For Christ our Passover has been sacrificed. Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” Moreover, when the people went out of the land of Egypt, it carried dough wrapped in its garments. When the dough had run out and they had no bread, God rained manna on them. But when they came to the holy land and received the fruits of the region of palms, the manna failed them, and then they began to eat of the fruits of the land. So three kinds of food are described in general. One is that which we eat as we leave the land of Egypt, but this is enough for only a short time. After it comes the manna. Third, we now take fruit from the holy land. In these differences (as far as my own limited understanding can reach) I think this is indicated: that the first food, which we carried with us when we came out of Egypt, is this slight secular learning, or, if anyone perhaps has attained to a knowledge of the liberal arts, that, which can help us a little. But placed in the desert, that is, in the state of life in which we now are, we eat manna, in that we are instructed by the teachings of the divine law. But he who is found worthy to enter the land of promise, that is, to obtain what has been promised by the Savior, eats the fruits from the region of palms. For truly he will find the fruit of the palm who has conquered the enemy and come to the promises. For it is certain that however great are the things we can now understand or perceive in the law of God or in the divine writings, much more sublime and lofty will be those which, when the enigma ceases, all the saints will be found worthy to see face to face, because “what eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has entered into the heart of man, God has prepared for those who love him.” But if the law is to be understood according to the letter alone, the sons of Israel will undoubtedly be found, while they were enjoying better things (for they received manna from heaven), to have received worse things from the promise, since, when the Egyptian food first failed them, the better food, manna from heaven, had followed. And how will it now be thought that when the better food ceased a worse one followed, unless because a greater and truer meaning is found in the spiritual understanding than in the text of the letter? But meanwhile, after Jesus brought the people into the holy land, then, when all had been conquered, he celebrates the Passover.

“When Jesus was in Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing opposite him, and a drawn sword was in his hand. And Jesus came near and said to him: Are you on our side, or on our enemies’ side? And he said: I am the commander of the Lord’s army; now I have come.” He looks up with his eyes, then, and sees the commander of the Lord’s army, as one who had not looked up before, but only then, when he was to see the commander of the Lord’s army. Yet when Jesus had seen him, he did not see him as an ordinary man, but understood that he was a certain power. For he is not yet certain whether the one he sees is one of the divine powers or one of the hostile ones, and therefore he asks and inquires, saying: “Are you on our side, or on our enemies’ side?” And he says: “I am the commander of the Lord’s army; now I have come.” And when he had heard this, Jesus worshipped and said: “Lord, what do you command your servant?” What is it that Jesus teaches us by this? Undoubtedly what the apostle says: “Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are from God.” Jesus recognized, then, not only that he is from God, but that he is God. For he would not have worshipped unless he had recognized God. For who else is the commander of the Lord’s armies but our Lord Jesus Christ? For the whole army of heaven, whether angels or archangels, or virtues, or dominions, or principalities, or powers, all these, which were made through him, serve as soldiers under him as their prince, who is the prince of princes and who gives rulers their authority. He is the one who says in the Gospel: “Have authority over ten cities.” And elsewhere: “You, have authority over five cities.” This is he who, having received the kingdom, returned.

But meanwhile let us see what the present reading suggests. Jesus is in Jericho; the enemy still holds the city; they are not yet conquered; and yet it is already said to Jesus: “Take off the shoe from your feet, for the place on which you stand is holy ground.” And how is Jericho holy ground, when it is held by the enemy? Perhaps this is what is indicated: that wherever the prince of the army of the power of the Lord comes, he sanctifies the place; for Jericho itself was not a holy place, but because the prince of the Lord’s army came there, the place is called holy. I dare to say something more: that even where Moses stood was not in itself a holy place, but because the Lord stood with Moses, the presence of the Lord had sanctified the place; and therefore it is said to him: “Untie the strap of your shoe, for the place on which you stand is holy ground.” Hence we too, if by our life and merits we approach God and are made worthy that God should stand by us, are told also to untie from the feet of our soul whatever bond of mortality is tied to them. For these are the feet which Jesus washes; and unless he washes them, we will have no part with him. If, then, we untie every bond of mortal care from our soul and senses, God will at once gladly be present with us and stand by us.

But let us see what comes next. Jericho is surrounded; it must be taken. How, then, is Jericho taken? No sword is drawn against it, no battering ram is aimed at it, no spears are hurled; only the priestly trumpets are used, and by them the walls of Jericho are brought down. For we often find Jericho set in the Scriptures as a figure of the world. For in the Gospel too, the man who is said to have gone down from Jerusalem to Jericho and to have fallen among robbers was undoubtedly a figure of that Adam who was thrust out of paradise into the exile of this world. But the blind men too who were in Jericho, to whom Jesus came to make them see, bore the form of those who were oppressed in this world by the blindness of ignorance, to whom the Son of God came. This Jericho, then, that is, this world, is going to fall. For the completion of the age has long since been proclaimed in the holy books. How, then, will its completion be given? By what instruments? “By the sound of trumpets,” it says. What trumpets? Let Paul reveal to you the secret of this mystery. Listen to what he says: “The trumpet will sound,” he says, “and the dead who are in Christ will rise imperishable,” and “the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God.” Then, therefore, Jesus our Lord will conquer Jericho with trumpets and lay it low, so that from it only the prostitute is saved, and all her house. Our Lord Jesus will come, it says, and he will come with the sound of trumpets. But let us pray even now that he may come and destroy the world, which lies in the evil one, and all things that are in the world, because “all that is in the world is the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes.” May he destroy these things, may he dissolve them very soon; but may he save this one alone, who received his spies, who placed his apostles, received in faith and obedience, in the upper rooms; and may he join and unite this prostitute with the house of Israel. But let us no longer bring up or reckon against her the old fault. Once she was a prostitute, but now she has been joined as a chaste virgin to one husband, Christ. Listen to the Apostle saying of her: “I have resolved this very thing, to present you as a chaste virgin to one husband, Christ.” He too was of her number who said: “For we too were once foolish, unbelieving, going astray, slaves to various desires and pleasures.” Do you want to learn still more fully how the prostitute is a prostitute no longer? Listen to Paul again, saying: “And such indeed you were; but you were washed, you were sanctified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.” For so that she might escape and not perish with Jericho, she received from the spies a most powerful sign of salvation, the scarlet cord. For through the blood of Christ this whole church is saved, in Jesus Christ our Lord himself, to whom is glory and dominion for ages of ages. Amen.