Слово о кресте Христовом. Св. Амвросия, епископа Медиоланского

The Cross of the Lord brought salvation to the human race: for the suffering of the Lord is our redemption, His death is our life. For this reason He endured all adversity so that we could enjoy all the blessings; For this reason, He deigned to undergo cruel torture in order to show us mercy. He wanted to be so merciful to us that He denied mercy to Himself: for through the cross, taking all the sorrows of the human race, He destroyed them in His suffering, so that man would no longer have anything that would harm him. So, great is the mystery of the cross: through it the world itself is preserved. When shipbuilders intend to sail on the sea, they first set up a mast, spread out a sail, so that, having made an image of the Cross of the Lord, they could cut through the waves; and, being safe under this sign of the Lord, they reach the haven of happiness and avoid the danger of death. The sail spread out on the mast serves as some kind of image of the sacrament, as if Christ were lifted up on the cross; and therefore, with the fearlessness that comes from the sacrament of the cross, sailors despise the storms of the winds and achieve the goals of their journey. Just as the Church cannot stand without a cross, so a ship without a mast is not strong: for the devil immediately disturbs it and the wind crushes it; but where the sign of the cross is delivered, the hostile force of the devil is immediately driven away, and the storm of winds subsides. In the same way, a good farmer, preparing to cultivate the land and obtain food to support life, tries to do this only through the sign of the cross. When he places coulters under the plow, attaches ears to it, and puts in a handle, he imitates the image of the cross: since the composition of the parts of the plow is some kind of similarity to the Cross of the Lord. And the sky is located in the image of a cross: dividing into four parts, that is, east and west, south and north, it is contained, as it were, by the four corners of the cross. The cross is also depicted by the position of a person raising his hands; and therefore we are commanded to raise our hands up during prayer, so that by the very position of our limbs we confess the suffering of the Lord. Our prayer is more likely to be heard when our body imitates Christ, with whom the soul converses. Thus, holy Moses, who made war with Amalek, defeated him not with weapons, not with iron, but with hands raised to God, for it is written: Whenever Moses lifted up his hand, Israel prevailed; when he lowered his hand, Amalek prevailed (Ex. 17:11). So, by the sign of the cross of the Lord the sea is divided, the earth is cultivated, the sky is ruled, and people are preserved. Even the underworld is opened by the sign of the cross of the Lord: for when the man Lord Jesus, who bore the cross, was buried in the earth, then it, as if dissolved and cultivated by Him, gave birth to all the dead that were in it. Now let's see what happens to the body of the Lord after it was taken down from the cross. Joseph of Arimathea, a righteous man, sculpted it, as the Evangelist says, and laid it in his new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid (Luke 23:50, 51, 53). Blessed is the body of the Lord Christ, which at its birth comes from the womb of the Virgin, and after its death is placed in the tomb of the righteous. Blessed is the body born of virginity and preserved by righteousness. Joseph's tomb kept this body incorrupt, since the womb of the Virgin Mary kept it clean. Here it is not desecrated by husband, there it is not damaged by death. Everywhere the blessed body belongs to holiness, everywhere to virginity: a new womb conceives it, a new tomb encloses it. And the womb of the Lord is virgin, and the tomb of the Lord is virgin; or, better yet, I would call the coffin itself a womb, for there is considerable similarity between the one and the other. Just as the Lord came out of his mother’s womb alive, so he rose alive from Joseph’s tomb; and just as then he was born from the womb to preach (the Gospel), so now from the tomb he was born again to preach the gospel. However, the last birth is more glorious than the first: for at the first birth the body was born mortal, and at the second - immortal; after the first birth it descends into the tomb, and after the last it ascends to heaven. Truly, the last birth is more important than the first: since in the first birth the Lord of the whole world was confined in the womb for nine months, and in the last birth he was in the bowels of the tomb for only three days. The first birth did not soon show the hope of all, but the last rather erected the salvation of all. Amen 2. Ambros. episc. Mediol. Opera. 1751 ann. Wenetiis; Christ. Read 1841. III, pp. 387–391; Sunday Read XX (1856–57), 467–468 pp. You might be interested in: