Already the sacred rays of Christ's light are shining, and the pure lights of the pure Spirit are rising. The heavenly treasures of glory and divinity have opened. The long, dark night has been swallowed up, its unseen darkness consumed, and the grim shadow of death overshadowed. Life has spread over everything, and everything is full of inexhaustible light. Dawn upon dawn fills the universe, and the great Christ, immortal and mighty, who existed before the morning star and the heavenly lights, shines over everything more brightly than the sun. For this reason a bright day, long, eternal, and unquenchable, now lives among all of us who have believed in him: the mystical Passover, celebrated symbolically through the law and fulfilled in reality through Christ; the wonderful Passover, an astonishing work of divine excellence and power; truly a feast and an eternal memorial. From suffering comes freedom from suffering; from death, immortality; from lifelessness, life; from a wound, healing; from a fall, resurrection; from descent, ascent. This is how God performs great deeds and creates wonders from impossibilities, making it known that he alone can do everything he wills. Let Egypt, then, announce the symbols in advance, and let the law interpret beforehand the images of the truth, like a messenger proclaiming the great arrival of a great king. There, let the multitude of Egypt's firstborn die, but let the mystical blood save Israel. All these things are shadows of what is to come. In us, however, the images take shape and the symbols reach fulfillment; in place of the shadow comes the precise and confirmed reality of the truth. For this reason the law went ahead, indicating through symbols the forms of the truth. The symbol appeared, and the truth was discovered. There was a lamb from a herd; here is a lamb from heaven. There was the sign of blood, a little protecting the whole; here is the Word [and] the cup filled with divine blood and Spirit. There was a sheep from a flock; here, in place of the sheep, is the Shepherd himself. How can the deeds themselves fail to promise the universal salvation of everything, when even their symbols alone bring salvation? Let the highest heavens celebrate, as the divine Spirit cries out, declaring God's glory and being the first to welcome the Father's dawning light of the divine Spirit. Let the angels and archangels of heaven celebrate, and let the whole heavenly people and army celebrate as they see the commander of the army above arriving bodily in the world. Let the choirs of stars celebrate, announcing the one who rises before the morning star. Let the air celebrate, measured through immeasurable depths and breadths. Let the salt water of the sea celebrate, honored by sacred footsteps. Let the earth celebrate, washed in divine blood. Let every human soul celebrate, refreshed through resurrection for a new birth. This is the Passover: the common festival of everything; the Father's will sent into the world; Christ's divine rising over the earth; the everlasting feast of angels and archangels; the immortal life of the whole world; death's fatal wound; humanity's imperishable food and the heavenly soul of everything; the sacred celebration of heaven and earth, proclaiming mysteries old and new, visible to sight on earth and understood in heaven. For this reason we turn to those initiated with sacred knowledge into things new and old. Such, in the few words we have been able to offer, is the public feast of Passover. To enjoy each part of the Word's banquet, feeding on heavenly rather than earthly things, let us also eat the spiritual Passover with the spiritual desire with which the Lord himself desired to eat with us, saying, ‘I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you.’ Come, then: first let us briefly explain what the law is, what need there is for it, and why the law came after Egypt; second, what the Passover that began in Egypt is, what its entire divine arrangement is, and what the whole mystery of Passover concerns. First we will set out the Scripture itself, so that comparison and juxtaposition may show us each point for contemplation. The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt: ‘This month shall be the beginning of months for you, the first among the months of the year. Speak to the whole assembly of the children of Israel: On the tenth of this month, let them take a sheep according to their ancestral households, a sheep for each house. If there are too few in a household to be sufficient for the sheep, they shall include their nearest neighbor, according to the number of people. Each person shall be counted for the sheep according to what is enough for them. Your sheep shall be perfect and a year old; you shall take it from the lambs or the young goats. Keep it until the fourteenth of this month, and the whole multitude of the assembly of the children of Israel shall slaughter it toward evening. They shall take some of its blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel, in the houses where they eat it. They shall eat the meat that very night, roasted over fire, and eat unleavened bread with bitter herbs. You shall not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted over fire, its head with its feet and internal organs. None of it shall remain until morning, and you shall not break a bone of it. Burn over fire whatever remains until morning. Eat it in this way: with your belts fastened, your shoes on your feet, and your staffs in your hands. Eat it in haste. It is the Lord's Passover. I will pass through the land of Egypt that night and strike every firstborn in the land of Egypt that night, both human and animal, and I will execute judgment on all the gods of the Egyptians. I am the Lord. The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you are. I will see the blood and shelter you, and no destructive blow shall strike you when I strike the land of Egypt. This day shall be a memorial for you, and you shall celebrate it as a feast to the Lord throughout your generations. Celebrate it as an eternal ordinance. For seven days you shall eat unleavened bread with bitter herbs.’ Again the Lord said to Moses and Aaron: ‘This is the law of Passover: no foreigner shall eat it. Circumcise every household servant bought with money, and then he may eat it. A resident alien and a hired worker shall not eat it. It shall be eaten in one house. You shall not carry any of its meat outside that house, and you shall not break a bone of it. The whole assembly of Israel shall observe it. No uncircumcised person shall eat it. There shall be one law for the native inhabitant and the convert who has joined you.’ In this mystical way divine Scripture prescribed the sacred feast beforehand. We shall now examine each of the things read, with your prayers searching the hidden mysteries of the Scriptures. We do not deny the truth of what is written, but contemplate the precise meaning of the mysteries through the symbols. The divine Spirit also commands Moses to make the tabernacle ‘according to the pattern I shall show you,’ as he says. In this way what is seen symbolically is also understood mystically according to its original and primordial pattern. Let us first explain what this month, the beginning of months, is, and why this Passover month is the first among the months of the year. Second, what is the sheep taken on the tenth of the month, the perfect sheep a year old? Who is the neighbor, and who is the one included nearby? Why is the sheep kept until the fourteenth and then sacrificed toward evening: ‘The whole multitude of the assembly of the children of Israel shall slaughter it toward evening’? What is the blood on the two doorposts and the lintel? Why do they eat the meat at night, roasted over fire, neither raw nor boiled in water? What does ‘its head with its feet and internal organs’ mean? Why ‘you shall not break a bone’? What is the unleavened bread with bitter herbs? Why shall you eat the Passover ‘in haste’? What are the fastened belts, the shoes on their feet, and the staffs in their hands? What does ‘the Lord's Passover’ mean, and ‘the blood shall be a sign on the houses where you are; I will see the blood and shelter you, and no destructive blow shall strike you when I strike the land of Egypt’? Why ‘for seven days you shall eat unleavened bread’? Why shall the foreigner not eat it, while the household servant is circumcised? What does this mean: ‘It shall be eaten in one house, and you shall not carry any of its meat outside or break a bone of it. No uncircumcised person shall eat it. The whole assembly shall observe it’—what assembly?—‘There shall be one law for the native inhabitant and the convert who has joined you’: one and the same law for both. These, then, are the symbols, signs, and mysteries, visibly performed in Israel but spiritually accomplished in us. After briefly discussing them, let us proceed to the mysteries of the truth: the arrival of Jesus Christ after the law, and why he came with a body; the Passover he desired to eat with us; why he who raised the dead by a word did not also rebuke death completely while alive; why he endured death on a tree at all; the thorn with which he was crowned, the vinegar and gall he drank, and the opened side from which blood and water flowed; why he prays for the cup to pass when he came precisely to drink it; the robbers crucified beside him, and which of the two was in paradise; why he entrusts his spirit to the Father's hands but his body to the new tomb; what was to be ‘in paradise’ and happened ‘today’; the three days he remained beneath the earth; why the women see him first and he announces the good news by saying, ‘Women, rejoice.’ These are the dishes of our sacred feast, the spiritual table, the immortal food and delight. Having eaten the bread from heaven and drunk the cup of gladness, boiling and fiery, the blood marked from above by the warm Spirit, let us take up the discussion and [say] first what the law is and how it was arranged. In this way comparison will teach us what the Word is and what the Word's freedom is. The law through Moses is a collection of varied and necessary teachings, a gathering of all the good things of life for the common benefit, a mystical imitation of the heavenly way of life: lamps and lampstands, fire and lights honoring the torch-bearing above. The law through Moses is the preliminary image of reverence for God, the command for an orderly way of life, the restraint upon the first sin, and the riddle of the coming truth. The law through Moses is the correction of Egyptian error, written by God's finger, for his uplifted arm was reserved for another purpose. The law through Moses leads in piety, guides in righteousness, enlightens the blind, exposes the foolish, instructs the immature, binds those who lack understanding, bridles the stubborn, and imposes a necessary yoke on those who pull in a different direction. The law through Moses is Christ's messenger, Jesus' forerunner, the herald and prophet of a great king, a wise school, a necessary training ground, instruction for the world, a teaching with a fixed term, a mystery that passes away. The law through Moses is a symbolic and enigmatic summary of the coming grace. Through images it announces the perfection of the coming truth: through sacrifices, the sacrificial victim; through blood, the blood; through the lamb, the Lamb; through the dove, the Dove; through altars, the high priest; through the temple, the dwelling of divinity; through the fire around the altar, all the world's light from above. This, then, is how the law has been mystically defined for us. The law necessarily comes after Egypt, cutting out the invisible evil shoots of a soul obsessed with matter and a heart that behaves like Egypt. Like a plow it cuts through the dense, thick thorns of thoughts within, plowing and opening the soul's depths in furrows, preparing a road and breaking fresh ground in the soul to receive the heavenly divine Word and seed. For this reason the divine Spirit rightly cries out, ‘Break up fresh ground for yourselves, and do not sow among thorns.’ This is also why the Passover mystically begins from Egypt: the first cutting away of dark idolatry, the mystical severing of godless obsession with idols, and the just nighttime blow against the firstborn seeds of error. Egypt did indeed suffer the blow against the firstborn, and the whole firstborn population died, so that the stubborn Pharaoh, who had not learned from the earlier blows, might finally be taught even in this way; that Israel might also be wonderfully saved in these events; and that God might be glorified in everything. Egypt suffered in the blow, while Israel celebrated the Passover. This is why the feast is called the Lord's Passover. There are many other mysteries of God's coming love for humanity, for the whole account is as follows. Vast, dark Egypt is an image of deep and dark error, for the first streams of deception came from there: calves, fish, birds, wild beasts, and all such living things made into gods and proclaimed divine. When just anger is revealed from heaven and great fury spreads over the whole earth, then superstitious error obsessed with idols will be struck first. ‘For on all the gods of the Egyptians,’ he says, ‘I will execute judgment. I am the Lord.’ The blow falls on all the firstborn because, claiming precedence in age for themselves, they also possessed the oldest forms of slavery to idols. The blow is dark and comes at night, for the punishments of dark deeds and demons are dark, gloomy, grim, lightless, and savage. ‘I will give wonders,’ he says, ‘in heaven and on earth: blood, fire, vapor. The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the great and glorious day of the Lord comes.’ And he says, ‘Alas for those who desire the day of the Lord! Why do you want this day of the Lord? It is darkness, not light. It is as if a man fled from a lion and a bear met him, or entered his house, rested his hands against the wall, and a snake bit him. Is not the day of the Lord darkness and not light, gloom with no brightness in it?’ The ‘blood as a sign’ is the blood-bearing mystery of Christ's seal. It is a ‘sign,’ not yet the actual truth; the sign is a sign of the coming truth. The destroying blow will pass by everyone who has the sign of blood impressed and anointed upon their souls as upon houses. ‘For in whatever houses the blood is seen,’ he says, ‘I will shelter you, and no destructive blow shall strike you when I strike the land of Egypt.’ The ‘blood as a sign,’ then, is protection. ‘In the houses’ means in the souls, for through faith the soul is the sacred dwelling of the divine Spirit. ‘I will shelter you’ means the boundless reach of Jesus' outstretched hands, which shelter those who believe. Such is the cosmic and universal mystery of Passover. Now listen as we explain the divine celebration in detail as well as we can. God and the Word who established the sacred Passover in himself and through himself know the actual truth of these things. But allow us, as human beings, forgiveness if, beloved, we really do make mistakes. Let us return to the beginning and explain first [what] this month, the beginning of months, is, and why the Passover month is the first among the months of the year. The teaching handed down in the Hebrews' secret tradition says that this is the season when God, the craftsman and creator of everything, created the universe. It was creation's first flowering and the world's beauty, when the creator saw his richly crafted image moving harmoniously according to his own mind. They infer this from the ordered heavens, the mildness of the seasons, the sun's regular course, and the dawns of undiminished light; also from the emergence of fruit, the growth of plants, the flowering ascent of trees, and the flocks already giving birth. The whole earth is already green, and the trees display blossoms as they labor to bring forth fruit. The farmer has unyoked the pair from the plow and rested his lowing team; having cast the divine seeds into the earth, he awaits the heavenly springs from above. The shepherd already milks white milk from the flocks, and the honey-makers draw out sweet combs of the season. The sailor, now cheerful, boldly faces the sea and ventures upon the blue wave with his profit-seeking skills. They say that this harmonious condition of everything, the order of the universe, and, one might say, its good fortune were its first offering, [and] that the year's beginning was the sweet pleasure of spring. I do not disbelieve these accounts either, but I think—and this is what I believe more strongly—that this Passover month, in which the great mystery is accomplished and sacredly celebrated, has been regarded as the beginning, head, and first ruling point of all time and every age because of the spiritual feast of Passover. Just as the Lord is from the beginning the first-generated and firstborn of all intelligible and invisible things, so this month, honored with the sacred celebration, has become the first of the year and the beginning of every age. This is the year proclaimed by divine Scripture: ‘To announce the Lord's acceptable year.’ The sheep is the sacred sacrificial victim. ‘He was led like a sheep to slaughter,’ it says, ‘and like a lamb silent before its shearer.’ And John says, ‘Here is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.’ The sheep is perfect and a year old: perfect as coming from heaven, a year old as being on earth. For a year is a measure of time on earth, repeating itself and circling back into itself, imitating immeasurable eternity through its recurring circular course. It is taken on the tenth of the month, most symbolically: the law is an interval before the gospel, and the law's highest teaching is the Ten Commandments. After the law's ten commandments, the mystical sheep comes from heaven. It is kept during the intervening days. Scripture hints at the interval until the suffering, in the Passover's bodily arrival, and at his arrest, when he was seized and held in the high priest's residence. I am the nearby neighbor included in the sheep, for you, Israel, did not have room for the sheep. Then the sheep is sacrificed toward evening, for the sacred Lamb of God too is killed toward the sun's setting. ‘The whole multitude of the assembly of the children of Israel shall slaughter it.’ For unbelieving Israel became guilty of that precious blood: the people then by killing him, and the people until now by refusing to believe. For this reason the divine Spirit bears witness against them and cries out, ‘Your hands are full of blood.’ The blood on the lintel means on the church, and on the two doorposts means on the two peoples. For the Savior does not deny that he was sent first to you, Israel. ‘For I was not sent,’ he says, ‘to you, but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’ I, however, sat beside another's table like a little dog, unable yet to eat the bread but collecting the falling crumbs, a dependent eating another's food. Since you did not recognize the manna from heaven, the bread was transferred to me through faith, and I, already becoming a son instead of a dog, [...]. The meat is eaten at night, for the light of the world set over Christ's great body. ‘Take, eat: this is my body.’ The meat is roasted over fire, for Christ's body is fiery and endowed with reason. ‘I came to cast fire on the earth, and what do I wish, if it is already kindled?’ The meat is not raw, so that the Word may be readily worked with, easy to offer, and easy to receive. Nor is it boiled in water, so that the Word may not be fluid, watery, or weakened. The head with the feet and internal organs: [...] as invisible counsel, the feet as the human being. The head with the feet and internal organs: beginning, middle, and end, holding, binding, and joining everything together in himself with unbreakable bonds, truly becoming ‘mediator between God and human beings.’ The head with the feet and internal organs: God, Word, and human being on earth. The head with the feet and internal organs: in height and depth and breadth [...] and the foundations of the earth. The head with the feet and internal organs: law, Word, and apostles; the law as beginning, the Word as counsel, and the apostles as feet. ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news.’ ‘You shall not break a bone of it,’ so that the bodily resurrection may be known. For he says, ‘Put your fingers into the marks of the nails, so that you may know that a spirit does not have flesh and bones.’ ‘You shall eat unleavened bread with bitter herbs,’ for the mysteries are bitter for you, or concern bitter deeds: ‘Your land is deserted, your cities burned with fire. Strangers devour your country before your eyes, and it has been deserted, overthrown by foreign peoples.’ ‘You shall eat the Passover in haste,’ for everyone about to approach the great body must be awake and sober. ‘With your belts fastened’: let the unrestrained streams of reproduction cease, the entanglements of flesh and filthy pleasures. ‘With your shoes on your feet’: steps directed along the right road, supports that do not limp, for they are roots of truth. ‘Your shoes on your feet’: Moses took them off, but Jesus put them on. ‘Remove the shoe from your feet,’ he says, to show that the law passes away. ‘I am not worthy to untie the strap of his shoes,’ to indicate that the Word is firmly fastened on every side. ‘Your staffs in your hands’: signs of divine power, supports of the Word's strength; the staff used through Moses, the staff used through Aaron, the almond staff, the staff that divided the sea's depths, the [staff] that sweetened the bitterness of the springs, the staff upon which God's seven holy spirits rested: ‘The spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and strength, [the spirit of knowledge and piety]; the spirit of the fear of God will fill him.’ The Passover is the Lord's Passover. What could the Spirit have proclaimed more clearly than this: that Passover is not a symbol, a narrative, or a shadow, but truly the Lord's Passover? The blood is a sign, a sign of the coming truth, the preliminary image of the true Spirit, an imitation of the great anointing. ‘I will see the blood and shelter you.’ You have truly sheltered us, Jesus, from the great destruction. You stretched out fatherly hands and covered us within your fatherly wings, causing divine blood to spring upon the earth through your blood-bearing efforts of love for humanity. You turned the threats of anger away from us and gave us back the first reconciliation from above. Let those people eat unleavened bread for seven days, practicing the world's sevenfold cycle and eating the [earthly] lawful food on earth. But ‘Christ our Passover has been sacrificed,’ and we have received the new dough of his sacred mixture, all of us newly leavened by a greater power and newly kneaded by his Spirit. For I [...] the kingdom of heaven itself, leavening three measures of fine flour proportionately with the mixed leaven. This is why the foreigner shall not eat this Passover: I do not throw pearls to pigs or give what is holy to dogs. But the person formerly enslaved in sins shall be circumcised in heart and released from bitter slavery; in this way they shall approach the mystery with noble status and then freely eat the Passover in freedom. ‘For Christ bought us back from’ slavery and ‘the curse, becoming a curse for us.’ ‘It shall be eaten in one house, and you shall not carry any of its meat outside.’ For there is one assembly and one house, namely the one church, in which Christ's sacred body is eaten. For this reason the meat shall not be carried outside the one house—the church—and whoever eats elsewhere shall be punished as impious and a thief. ‘There shall be one law for the free person and the convert.’ Where Christ is, there is freedom: equal speech, equal law, equal honor for everyone. All were bought with precious blood. For this reason ‘you are no longer a slave,’ no longer a Jew, but free, for we have all become free in Christ. Listen, then, listen: after the symbols and the arrangement of the law, hear what Christ's arrival on earth after [the law] is and how great it is. What is Christ's arrival? Escape from slavery, release from the old compulsion, the beginning of freedom, the honor of adoption, a spring of forgiveness of sins, truly immortal life in everything. Seeing us from above tyrannized by death, at once dissolved and bound by the bonds of corruption, flowing down the unavoidable and irreversible road, he came and took [...] of the first-formed creature in accordance with the Father's plans. He did not entrust the ministry on our behalf to angels or archangels, but the Word himself undertook the whole struggle for us, obeying the Father's commands. The unmixed divine Spirit is unapproachable to everything. So that everything would not suffer from the Spirit's unmixed impact, he willingly contracted himself within himself, gathering and concentrating within himself the entire greatness of divinity. He came in the measure he chose, without becoming smaller in himself, diminishing, or exhausting his glory. Through the Father's surpassing power he did not lose what he possessed while taking on what he did not possess. He came in the measure in which he was to be received. Since there also had to be a vessel for the divine Spirit, so that the first ones might share in human nature and substance, [...] filtering and gathering together, boiling away and separating what was excessive and cloudy, but illuminating, brightening, and surrounding with radiance what was pure, clear, and genuine; setting it on fire, consecrating it as a bridal chamber and making it virginal, and, so to speak, making it angelic, he took bodily shape in the human image. His rising was spiritual, but he took on a bodily form. For this reason Scripture indicated him most mystically: ‘Here is a man,’ it says, ‘whose name is Rising’; Rising as being in Spirit, a man as being in a body. ‘For the Spirit of the Lord will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. For this reason the holy one being born shall be called Son of the Most High.’ Since the birth is extraordinary and divine, the Spirit rightly expresses wonder: ‘Who shall recount his generation?’ There are four ruling names of divinity through which faith in the divine Spirit is especially expressed: lordship, divinity, sonship, and eternal kingship. See whether he was honored to receive only these excellences and glories. First see his lordship: ‘The Lord said to my Lord: Sit at my right hand.’ You see him as Lord from the Lord; see his sonship too: ‘He shall call me Father, and I will make him firstborn’; and, ‘You are my Son; today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance.’ You see him as Son, firstborn, and only-begotten; see him as God too: ‘Tall men shall cross over to you, pray in you, worship in you, and follow bound in handcuffs, for you are God, because God is in you.’ You have seen him as God; see him also as eternal king: ‘Your throne, God, is forever and ever. The staff of your kingdom is a staff of uprightness. You loved righteousness and hated lawlessness. For this reason God, your God, anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions.’ You have seen him as king; together with his kingship, see him as Lord of powers: ‘Lift up the gates, you rulers, and be lifted up, eternal gates, and the king of glory shall enter. Who is this king of glory? The Lord of powers: he is the king of glory.’ You see him as king and Lord of powers; see, beyond these, his eternal high priesthood too: ‘The Lord swore and will not change his mind: You are a priest forever.’ If he is Lord and God and Son and king and Lord of powers and eternal high priest, when he wills he ‘is also a human being, and who shall know him?’ ‘Also a human being’ plainly implies that he is already God. So that he may not be thought, according to human opinions, to have arrived on earth spontaneously as a phantom or spirit without birth, hear also how he became a child: ‘Listen, then, house of David. Is it a small thing for you to trouble human beings? Why do you also trouble the Lord? The Lord himself gives you a sign: Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel.’ And, ‘I wished that they had been burned with fire, because a child was born for us, whose rule rests upon his shoulder. His name is called Messenger of Great Counsel, Wonderful Counselor, God with Authority, Prince of Peace, Father of the Coming Age.’ This great Jesus, God and human being, has arrived among us; let no one disbelieve. The ruling Spirit was received within a human body. For Adam, while still earth and clay, received the Father's first mystical breath. The divine Spirit is not harmed by being joined to a body through God's will. If the first dust received the sacred Spirit, a body endowed with a soul received Christ's immortal life. If slavery to sin and death had affected only the spirit, this great bodily coming would have been unnecessary; neither sin nor death would have been defeated. But sin had to be abolished and the body set free. For this reason ‘he committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.’ He therefore clothed himself in that original poor and mortal body. This is why the Spirit cries out about him, ‘He has no form or glory. We saw him, and he had no form or beauty, but his appearance was dishonored, inferior to the children of humanity.’ For ‘in the likeness of sinful flesh, without sin, he condemned sin,’ showing that ‘those who are healthy do not need a physician, but those who are ill.’ He therefore healed all our bodies of their weaknesses and cured particular diseases with the authority of his power, so that this might be fulfilled: ‘I am the Lord God. I called you in righteousness; I will hold your right hand and strengthen you. I gave you as a covenant for my people, a light for nations, to open blind eyes, to bring prisoners out of chains and those sitting in darkness out of the prison house. I am the Lord God: this is my name.’ ‘You who are deaf, hear the words of a book’; and, ‘Light has risen for those sitting in darkness’; ‘Then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of those who struggle to speak shall be clear.’ When the particular evils have been removed, ‘the last enemy, death, is abolished in victory. Death, where is your sting?’ This was the Passover Jesus desired to suffer for us. Through suffering he freed us from suffering, through death he conquered death, and through visible food he supplied his immortal life. This is Jesus' saving desire, this most spiritual love: to show the symbols as symbols and to give his sacred body to his disciples in their place. ‘Take, eat: this is my body. Take, drink: this is my blood, the new covenant, poured out for many for forgiveness of sins.’ [...] to eat as much as he desires to suffer, so that he may free us from the suffering that came through eating. For this reason, setting tree against tree, and against the evil hand once stretched out impiously [...], reverently nailing his own undefiled hand, he showed the whole of life truly hanging in himself. You, Israel, were unable to eat, but we ate with indestructible spiritual knowledge, and having eaten we do not die. This is my plant for eternal salvation; I feed upon it and share its banquet. I take root with its roots and stretch out with its branches; I am refreshed by its dew and cultivated by its Spirit, delighting in it as in a breeze. I have pitched my shelter in its shade, and, escaping the great heat, I have a dwelling moist with dew. I bloom with its flowers and take full delight in its fruits; unhindered, I harvest the fruits kept for me from the beginning. It is food when I am hungry, a spring when I am thirsty, and covering when I am naked. Even its leaves are the Spirit of life: no longer fig leaves for me. It is my protection when I fear God, my support when I am shaken, my prize when I compete, and my trophy when I have won. It is my narrow path, the constricted road. It is Jacob's ladder and the angels' route, at whose summit the Lord truly stands firm. This tree reaching heaven rose from earth to heaven, an immortal plant setting itself firmly between heaven and earth: the foundation of everything, the support of the universe, the brace of the whole inhabited world, the cosmic bond holding together the varied substance of humanity, fastened with the Spirit's invisible nails, so that, joined to the divine, it might never again be dissolved. He touches the highest summits of heaven, holds the earth firm with his feet,⁠a and embraces the great intervening expanse of the air's spirit on every side with immeasurable hands. He was wholly in everything and everywhere. Having filled the universe through himself, he stripped naked to wrestle against the powers of the air. For a short time he cries out for the cup to pass, to show truly that he was ‘also a human being.’ But remembering why he was sent, and wishing to fulfill the divine arrangement for which he was sent, he cries out again, ‘Not my will, but your will.’ For ‘the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.’ Running the victorious contest for the soul, he first crowned his sacred head with thorns, removing the whole ancient curse of the earth and, through his divine head, taming again the thorny growth that had multiplied because of sin. Having drunk the dragon's bitter, sharp gall, he mixed for us in its place all the sweet springs flowing from himself. Wishing to undo the work of the female and to check the death-bearing one who had earlier flowed from a side, he opened his own sacred side in himself. From it flowed sacred blood and water, the perfect signs of the mystical spiritual marriage, adoption, and rebirth. ‘For he will baptize you in the Holy Spirit and fire’: the water corresponds to ‘in Spirit,’ and the blood to ‘in fire.’ Then two robbers are stretched out beside him, carrying within themselves signs of the two peoples. One changes and shows gratitude, openly confesses, and reveres the Master. The other remains stubborn in his behavior, is ungrateful to the Master, shows no reverence, and persists in his former sins. Or these may be the soul's two ways of thinking. One turns from its former sins and strips itself for the Master, and therefore is judged worthy of the kindness and honor that follow repentance. The other has no excuse, for it does not change and remains a robber to the end. When the cosmic contest reached its end and he had won every struggle on every side, neither exalted as God nor defeated as a human being, he remained rooted at the boundary of everything, himself displaying and celebrating in himself a victorious trophy over the enemy. Then the universe was astonished by the persistence of his endurance. Then the heavens shook, and the powers, thrones, and laws beyond the world were stirred, seeing the commander of the great army hanging there. The stars of heaven nearly fell as they saw the one who existed before the morning star stretched out. The sun's fire nearly went out as it saw the world's great light darkened. Then the earth's rocks split, crying out against Israel's ingratitude: ‘You did not recognize the spiritual rock you followed and drank from.’ The temple curtain tore, sharing the suffering and pointing to the true heavenly high priest. The whole world would almost have been thrown into confusion and dissolved in fear of the suffering, had the great Jesus not breathed out the divine Spirit, saying, ‘Father, I entrust my spirit into your hands.’ For as everything reeled, trembled with the earthquake of fear, and shook, the divine Spirit rose again; the universe was, in a sense, given soul and life and support, and stood firm once more. What a divine stretching out, present in everything and everywhere! What a crucifixion extended through all things! Unique among the unique, truly whole throughout everything, let the heavens receive your Spirit, paradise your soul—for he says, ‘Today I shall be with you in paradise’—and the earth your body. The indivisible one has been divided so that everything may be saved and even the region below may not remain uninitiated into the divine arrival. ‘We did not see his form, but we heard his voice.’ Even during his life he broke death's bonds by exercising royal authority, as in ‘Lazarus, come out,’ and ‘Girl, rise,’ to show the power of his command. For this reason he also offered his whole self to death, so that the ravenous beast and the insatiable bond might be utterly put to death within him. Death searched everywhere in his sinless body for its usual food: perhaps pleasure, perhaps anger, perhaps disobedience, perhaps the ancient sin that was death's first food. For ‘the sting of death,’ he says, ‘is sin.’ Since death found nothing in him that could nourish it, it was wholly enclosed within itself and dissolved through lack of food, becoming death to itself. And as many of the righteous proclaimed good news and prophesied, and the firstborn from the dead in resurrection [...], he also endured the three days beneath the earth, to save the entire human race: those before the law, [those through the law,] and those through himself. Perhaps he also remains for three days in order to raise the living being complete: soul, spirit, and body. The women see him risen first. Just as a woman first brought sin into the world, so she is also the first to announce life to the world. For this reason they hear the sacred voice, ‘Women, rejoice,’ so that the first sorrow may be swallowed up by the joy of resurrection. Remaining for a short time and confirming his sacred resurrection, he provides even the unbelieving with faith in resurrection, so that they may believe his resurrection from the dead was bodily. He had carried and clothed himself in the whole image; having reclothed the old human being, he transformed it into the heavenly human being. Then the image, united with him, also ascended with him into heaven. Seeing the great mystery, a human being already ascending together [in] God, the powers joyfully encouraged the armies above and cried, ‘Lift up your gates, rulers, and be lifted up, eternal gates, and the king of glory shall enter.’ Those who saw the new wonder, a human being united with God, cried back, ‘Who is this king of glory?’ Those who had been asked replied, ‘The Lord of powers: he is the king of glory, strong and mighty and powerful in war.’ What a mystical celebration, what a spiritual feast! Divine Passover, journeying from heaven as far as earth and ascending again from earth to heaven! Common feast of everything, universal festival, joy and honor and food and delight of the universe! Through it dark death was destroyed, life spread over everything, and heaven's gates opened. God appeared as a human being, and a human being ascended as God. Through him the gates of Hades were shattered and their adamantine bars undone; the people below rose from the dead as good news was announced, and a choir from earth was given to the heavenly assemblies. Divine Passover, which did not confine God away from heaven and has now joined us spiritually! Through it the great bridal chamber [...] was filled, and everyone wears wedding clothes; no one is cast out for lacking a wedding garment. Passover, light of a new procession of lamps, splendor of the virgins' torch-bearing! Through him the lamps of souls are no longer extinguished. The fire of grace is carried divinely and spiritually in everyone, in body and spirit, supplied with Christ's oil. We appeal to you, God and Master, spiritually eternal, and Master and King Christ: stretch your great hands over your sacred church and your ever-holy people. Guard them, preserve them, fight for them, campaign beside them, struggle with them, subdue all enemies, and conquer the adversaries by invisible power. Just as you conquered our enemies, now raise the trophies of victory for us yourself, and grant us also to sing the victory song with Moses, for the glory and power are yours forever and ever. Amen.