The Holy Spirit set this forth of old, when he said in the Psalms, O my king and my God. For to you will I pray; O Lord, in the morning you shall hear my voice. In the morning I will stand before you, and will see you.^[1] And again through the prophet the Lord says, At dawn they will be on watch for me, saying, ‘Let us go and return to the Lord our God.’ Likewise at the setting of the sun and at the end of the day necessarily there must again be prayer. For since Christ is the true sun and the true day, as the sun and the day of the world recede, when we pray and petition that the light come upon us again, we pray for the coming of Christ to provide us with the grace of eternal light.

For when God snatches away or strikes, no one can heal. Thus in the calamity they remembered God. These may refer to those among the Hebrews who afterward came to believe in Christ. In such a thirst and long captivity they will seek the face, namely, the Son. For he is the mark of the Father’s hypostasis (person). Those who turn to the Son are stripped of the veil which lies on their heart.

In the beginning he seized Adam’s human nature; for he at once declared it accursed, ascribing it to death and corruption. Thus the wrath has struck, but grace plugged the wound with lint. For Christ has brought the healing. He invited [us] to know the true divine revelation; he confirmed [us] through the Spirit to observe the commandments. He showed us again to be zealous followers by placing us beyond corruption and freeing us from the previous infirmities, namely, sin and passions.

A few of the Jews of that time were persuaded, but the world hearkened to the truth. Those who concealed the truth were buried in oblivion, but those who received it were made manifest by the power of the Savior, who rose from the dead and raised the dead himself. In the person of the risen dead the prophet Hosea says plainly, He will revive us after two days; on the third day he will raise us up, to live in his presence.

Further on, Hosea foretold the resurrection of Christ on the third day, but in the mysterious way that is proper to prophecy. He says, He shall heal us after two days, and on the third day we shall rise again. This is the idea underlying the words of Paul [when he says], Therefore if you have risen in Christ, seek the things that are above.^[1]

Hear what the prophet says: God will revive us after two days, and on the third day we shall arise and live in his sight. The first day is the passion of the Savior for us. The second is the day on which he descended into hell. The third day is the day of resurrection.^[1] Therefore on the third day God went before them, by day in a column of cloud, by night in a column of fire.^[2] But if according to what we said above, the apostle teaches us rightly that the mysteries of baptism are contained in these words,^[3] it is necessary that those who are baptized in Christ are baptized in his death and are buried with him. [They must] also arise from the dead with him on the third day,^[4] according to what the apostle says, He raised up together with him and at the same time made them sit in the heavenly places.^[5] When, therefore, you shall have undertaken the mystery of the third day, God will begin to lead you and will himself show you the way of salvation.

The prince of this world did not want the Lord’s army to recognize the engagement of those three days, as that engagement of which the prophet said, He will revive us after two days; on the third day he will raise us up. The first day for us is the passion of the Savior; the second day on which he descended into hell; but the third day is the day of the resurrection. So then on the third day God went before them in a pillar of cloud by day and by night in a pillar of fire, and the people were led through the Red Sea. The three days we can fittingly call the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, for the Father is a day, the Son is one, and the Holy Spirit is one, and these three are one.

Nor is this the only thing that proves the dignity of the water. But there is also that which is more honorable than all—the fact that Christ, the maker of all, came down as the rain, and was known as a spring,^[1] and diffused himself as a river,^[2] and was baptized in the Jordan.^[3] For you have just heard how Jesus came to John and was baptized by him in the Jordan. Oh, things strange beyond compare! How should the boundless river that makes glad the city of God^[4] have been dipped in a little water!

[God] is called not only at morning or dawn or daybreak; he will come to us as an early and later rain to earth. We accept Christ as an early rain when the foundations of the faith are laid within us, and we shall take him as a late rain when after the crop is ripened we grasp eternal fruits and store them up in the Master’s barn.

For I suppose that he waters in two ways upon us who received faith and have known rightly his manifestation. On the one hand, he reveals knowledge in the spirit of the old and legal, and in addition to these, prophetic teachings. In my view, this is the early rain. On the other hand, he adds to this the late [rain], the interpretation of the gospel’s teachings and the most desirable grace of the apostolic preachings.

But he would not threaten the impenitent if he failed to pardon the penitent. This would be doubtful only if he had not revealed elsewhere the profusion of his mercy. Has he not said, He who is fallen shall rise, and he who was turned away shall return?^[1] He it is, most assuredly, who will have mercy rather than sacrifice.^[2] The heavens and the angels who are there rejoice at human repentance. Look at you now, sinner, be of good heart! You see where it is that you are a cause of joy.

For to every one who has turned to God in truth and with a whole heart, the doors are open, and the thrice-glad Father receives his truly repentant child. And true repentance is to be no longer bound in the same sins for which he denounced death against himself, but to eradicate them completely from the soul. For on their uprooting God takes up his abode again in you. For it is said there is great and exceeding joy and festivity in the heavens with the Father and the angels when one sinner turns and repents.^[1] This is why he cries, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice.^[2]

God himself has said that he would rather have his commandments obeyed than sacrifice offered to him. God proclaims this, Moses declares it to the people of Israel, Paul preaches it to the nations. Do that which you see is better for the time. I desire mercy more than sacrifice,^[1] it says. Are not those who condemn their sin truer Christians than those who think to defend it? The just accuses himself in the beginning of his words.^[2] The one who accuses himself when he sins is just, not the one who praises himself.

Great is the principle of mercy to God. Not only his to us, but also that issuing from us to our fellow servants. In the Old Testament and the New, God lays down innumerable laws pertaining to this matter. He orders us to be benevolent continually in all quarters, through words, money and deeds. And Moses throughout—up and down, here and there—scatters words about these matters in all his legislations. And in the person of God the prophets shout, I desire mercy, and not sacrifice. And all the apostles act and speak in harmony with these prophetic words. Therefore let us not neglect the matter.^[1] By mercy we greatly benefit ourselves, not the poor only. We receive much more than we provide.

Most of all, worship of God displays love. . . . For truly the compassion from beside the Father is Christ, as he takes away the sins, dismisses the charges and justifies by faith, and recovers the lost and makes [them] stronger than death. For what is good and he does not give? Therefore the knowledge of God is better than sacrifice and holocausts, as it is brought to perfection in Christ. For by him and in him we have known the Father, and we have become rich in the justification by faith.

Whereas I [the Lord] have no need of sacrifices, I accept them out of considerateness for the limitations of your way of thinking. These two things, on the contrary, I do require: the right disposition toward me and lovingkindness toward the neighbor, these also being the first obligations I imposed, You will love the Lord your God with your whole heart, your whole soul, your whole mind and your whole strength; and you will love your neighbor as yourself.^[1] But whereas I imposed these obligations, they resembled someone breaking agreements made by him with somebody else. In similar fashion, in fact, they despised my longsuffering and trampled on the laws given them.

Therefore each one must keep his heart with all watchfulness,^[1] for when the Lord comes in the day of judgment, He will bring to light the hidden things of darkness and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts,^[2] all the thoughts of men meanwhile accusing or else excusing them,^[3] when their own devices have beset them about. But of such a nature are the evil thoughts that sometimes they make worthy of censure even those things which seem good and which, so far as the popular judgment is concerned, are indeed worthy of praise.

Although you might marry and in the face of the authority of all the Scriptures never commit adultery, why do you not with God’s grace accept what is lawful? Instead you dare to offend God and commit what is unlawful. I would like to know whether those who have no wives, and neither fear nor blush to commit adultery before they are joined in wedlock, would want their spouses to be violated by adulterers before they come to marriage. Since there is no one who would patiently accept this, why does not each one observe toward his spouse the fidelity he wants observed by her? Why does one desire to take a virgin as his wife, when he himself is corrupted? Why does he wish to be united to a wife who is alive, when he is dead in soul because of adultery, according to what is written: The soul that sins shall die?^[1] Moreover, the apostle exclaims in terrible words, God will judge the immoral and adulterers,^[2] and Adulterers will not possess the kingdom of God.^[3] Furthermore, They are all adulterers, their hearts like an oven.

But where shall I find an approach to the divine Scripture that teaches me what an oven is? I must call upon Jesus my Lord, that he may make me the seeker find and may open to the one knocking,^[1] that I may find in Scriptures the oven where I can rightly bake my sacrifice that God may accept it. Indeed, I think I have found it in Hosea the prophet, where he says, All adulterers are as an oven ignited for burning. And again he says, Their hearts glowed as an oven. The human heart therefore is an oven. But this heart, if vices ignite it or the devil inflames it, will not bake, but it will burn up. But if that one who said, I came to send fire into the earth^[2] should ignite it, the loaves of the divine Scriptures and of the words of God which I receive in my heart, I do not burn up for destruction, but I bake for sacrifice.

The kingdom of the ten tribes has become like any other nation because they went away from the Lord. And he [Ephraim] is like a bread beneath the ashes that is not turned, that is, he does not repent.

Ephraim is a cake under the ashes not turned. For a cake under the ashes, which has ashes on it, has its cleaner side flat to the ground and its upper side the fouler, in proportion as it carries the ashes on it. And so with the mind that harbors earthly thoughts: what else does it carry on itself but a load of ashes? But if it will be turned, the clean surface (which it had kept downward) it brings back to the top and shakes off the ashes that it had on it. If therefore we shake off from the mind the ashes of earthly thoughts, as it were, we turn the cake under the ashes, that this bent of our mind may henceforth go to the rear, which the ashes of groveling thought before overlaid. And the clean face may come to the top, that our right bent of mind may not henceforth be surcharged with the weight of earthly desire.

Strangers have devoured his strength, and he has known it not. Strangers is usually understood to be apostate angels, who devour our strength when they consume the virtue of the mind by perverting it. Ephraim endured both and did not know it, because through the temptation of malignant spirits he both lost the strength of his mind and did not understand that he had lost it.

Not content with these words, the blessed Anthony entered upon a wider field of discussion, and he said, This way of life and this most lukewarm condition not only causes you the loss that I have spoken of, even though you yourself may not feel it now. You may even somehow say in keeping with a sentence from Proverbs: ‘They strike me, but I did not grieve, and they mocked me, but I was unaware.’^[1] And remember what is said by the prophet Hosea: ‘Aliens devoured his strength, and he himself did not even recognize it.’

One may ask: Why was Ephraim compared with a dove and not with other birds? The other birds hurry to protect their offspring even at the risk of life, and when they see a bird of prey, snake, raven or crow approaching their nest, they fly to and fro, and attack with their beak, and wound with their claws, and with a crying voice show the parent’s suffering. Only the dove does not grieve for or miss [its] robbed offspring. Ephraim is rightly compared with this bird because he does not suffer for his devastated people but is indifferent to its salvation.

If [birds] do not hold to the narrow path with cautious and careful restraint as they go their way, making their airy progress through the void, thanks to their marvelous skill, the earth, which is as it were the natural mooring for everyone and the most solid and safe foundation for all, becomes for them a present and manifest danger—not because its nature is changed but because they fall precipitously upon it by the weight of their body. Similarly, the unwearying goodness of God and his unchangeable substance itself certainly hurt no one, but we ourselves bring death upon ourselves by falling from the heights to the depths. For this very fall means death for the one who falls. For it is said: Woe to them, for they have departed from me. They shall be destroyed, for they have transgressed against me.

First I will educate them through the threat of sufferings. Then I will catch all of them like birds, placing around them a cloud of enemies like a net. And having said that, he does not forget his love for mankind but offers a dirge from fatherly love for them.