Introduction
Peter (also known as Peter Cellensis) was born of noble parentage in Champagne, France, in the first half of the 12th century. He was educated at the Monastery of St. Martin-des-Champs in Paris before he became a Benedictine. In 1150, he was named abbot of the Abbey of La Celle, near Troyes. He was later made abbot of the Abbey of St. Rémy at Rheims, in 1162, and in 1181, he became Bishop of Chartres, succeeding John of Salisbury. He died a few years later, on February 20, 1183. Peter wrote many epistles and sermons, as well as a few treatises, including On Conscience, On the Discipline of the Cloister, and an explanation of the Mosaic tabernacle.
This is the second of two sermons on the Transfiguration; I translated the first sermon here. The source is PL 202:843A-848C. I also recently translated Peter's first sermon on St. Mary Magdalene.
Sermon 66: On the Transfiguration of the Lord #II
Peter of Celle (d. 1183)
We cannot worthily write or say
something about Jesus, unless we receive it from Him from Whom is every best
giving and every perfect gift, according to the measure of the giving (Jas
1:17, Eph 4:7). Indeed, the Spirit, Who
speaks mysteries, proceeds as much from the Father as from Him; He is the
scrutator of the ineffable secrets of God (1 Cor 2:10), nor is He oppressed by
the majesty in which He equally reigns, without inequality of substance. Therefore, He is present to us, teaching
every truth, especially when we speak of Jesus, when we write of Jesus.
Lord
Jesus, when, according to the nature of the divinity, there is no change with
You, nor shadow of vicissitude (Jas 1:17), You assumed the human condition
which, subject to temporality and vanity, in no way excepts the lot of
mutability, but runs in time and with time, in according with the order of
nature, wherefore this is said: The boy Jesus grew in age and wisdom bef0re
God and men (Lk 2:52). In this,
therefore, and according to this nature, the spouse of the Church, whose belly
is ivory, distinguished with sapphires (Sgs 5:14), made distinction, not only
by preaching with lips, but also by performing actions in accord with the
threads of eternity, about what and when He would speak, what and when He would
act, so that He would not only submit to human troubles, but also keep to the
plan of the paternal and perpetual edict and the eternal decree, wherefore He
says in the Gospel: As the Father gave command to me, so do I act (Jn
14:31).
Therefore,
so that the devotion of His faithful would not abhor a nearly unbelievable
thing, He willed to suffer the things sufferable to man, wherefore He was
recognized as a man; He performed signs and miracles which, as Nicodemus
said, no one could do, unless God were with him (Jn 3:2). Not just through grace, because of the man,
but also through nature, because of the divinity, so that God would be
believed. But more evident and more
beautiful signs of humanity appeared more rarely, even in the face of the
foolish; those which indubitably asserted God scarcely touched the disciples’
hearts. Without a doubt, the newness of
the mystery of the incarnate Word hindered the world from believing what had
not been heard from the ages (Is 64:4), what human reason did not comprehend,
what neither use nor custom had ever approved, namely, that God became man.
Occasionally
shining through, a ray of Divinity excited the inertial torpor of the Jews, but
did not strike them; it animated the disciples’ vigilance, but, the height of
the matter stupefying them, sometimes it turned them back from the
strength of faith for a while, in such a way that they frequently heard:
“Little in faith, why do you doubt?”
Again, Thus far, and are you still without intellect (Mt
15:16)? Therefore, along the mixed
course of apostolic stability and instability, while the time of the passion
was approaching, so that He would disperse every fog of doubt, He took Peter
and James and John, and He ascended a high mountain, where He was transfigured
before them (Mt 17:1-2).
Most
strong and unconquerable is this argument for the Christian faith, that under
the veil of flesh hid the power of divinity, and, again, He Who appeared
outwardly as a man was God, which, being hidden within, did not appear. For neither in this moment of the Transfiguration
did the apostles see the substance of divinity, but, by a holy pre-libation,
through the medical art, they pre-tasted the flesh which was, a little later,
to be glorified by the perpetual resurrection, so that, by the strength of this
meal, they would not fall away until the mount of God, Horeb, that is, in the
resurrection, in which, according to the interpretation of this name,[1]
mortality as well as all possibility was dried up in Christ; for Christ
arising from the dead now does not die (Rom 6:9), etc.
Rightly
honored by Christians is this holy and radiant solemnity, upon which faith
presses like a footprint, which faith, even if it did not perilously
waver, yet did not provide deep roots.
Indeed, it came forth beforehand in the baptism of John, where the
Spirit was seen in the image of a dove, the Father likewise heard in voice, This
is My beloved Son in Whom I am well pleased; listen to Him (Mt 3:47)—a
certain emulation of this most beautiful Transfiguration.
Truly,
by the shadow of the Sacrament, that event is more fruitful, because of
the mystery of our regeneration, which began then; this one, higher by beauty
and stronger by the attestation of witnesses; for the testimony of one is far
weaker than that of five or three: John alone heard and saw that one. Peter and James and John, with Moses and
Elijah, were present here, and they are apt witnesses. There, neither the flesh nor face of Jesus
changed its appearance; here, His face shone like the sun, beyond the sight of
man; that one was done in the desert, this on a high mountain; both there and
here, the glory of Jesus. There, as it
were, the entrance of faith was seen, here, as it were, its departure, where
the matter is discerned with manifest faith.
About that one, the Apostle says, We see now through a mirror
and in enigma (1 Cor 13:12); of this one, John says, We have seen His
glory, glory as if of the only-begotten of the Father (Jn 1:14).
Lord
Jesus, since You, as it were, took off our mortality for an hour, could you
not, if it would hasten our salvation without a plundering of pain and
groaning, put Your power and beauty on top, and not permit Your sackcloth to be
torn by the Jews, but rather make comedy from sackcloth[2] as
easily as wine from water? But as the
Passion, as was proper, was voluntary, by a clearer light, it appears He was to
accept, without coercion or inevitable necessity, what was in the mouth of
Benjamin’s sack along that way (Gen 42:27-28)—by the open sack was revealed the
great mystery of piety, as that money, with which the son of the right hand was
to redeem Israel and the Gentiles, was in the mouth of Jesus; wherefore, when
He said, It is consummated (Jn 19:30), and He sent forth His Spirit, the
price was paid, and what the adversary had hand-written against us was erased
(Col 2:14).
Setting
aside such a mystery, what happened on the way pertains to the
Transfiguration—that is, before he came to the mansion, Benjamin’s sack was
opened, not torn asunder. For the
Passion was a tearing asunder, the Transfiguration, an opening; in the opening,
the sack was not emptied or voided, since, the Transfiguration being finished,
it received the same form and habit of mortality, or it represented what it
received from its mother, entering into the world, and, as it were, it set down
a certain prelude of the Resurrection.
But in the tearing asunder, it was absorbed in victory, and Jacob did not
play with Esau—that is, the devil—but made a game of[3]
him and supplanted him; so that, the body of sin being destroyed, no plant
remained from which a revived deception of the human race could sprout forth and
repeat the death of Christ by necessity.
Therefore,
the Transfiguration was, as it were, an interpretation of a certain necessary
mortality that was to come due to sin, by which Jesus proved Himself not
affected by the laws of death, except only when, and how, and how far He wills
it, for what was for an hour there would have been continuous if He had willed
it. Therefore, He manifested Himself,
not as the Jews considered Him to be, but as the apostles believed Him to be;
not to all people, but to the witnesses preordained by God, since the truth was
not to be suppressed, so that no one would know it, nor was it to be disclosed
to the princes of the world, until He had concluded the beginning of His prayer
with a better end. For this would be an
impediment to His plan, which would generate a detriment to Christian faith;
for who would know the sense of the Lord unless He Who is in the bosom of the
Father explains it, when no one knew the Son except the Father, nor did anyone
know the Father except the Son, and to whom the Son willed to reveal Him (Mt
11:27)? Therefore, in this
Transfiguration, the Son commends the Father, and the Father, the Son, saying, This
is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well-pleased; listen to Him (Mt 17:5).
Sweet
is light—as Solomon says—and delightful to the eyes is seeing the sun
(Prv 2:17); Peter the apostle proves this, he who, when he saw Jesus clothed in
light as in a vestment—for His vestments were white as snow (Mt
17:2)—and discerned His face to shine, resplendent as the sun, in His power,
said, Lord, it is good for us to be here (Mt 17:4); indeed, baited by
the hook of such sweetness, which they had forgotten before, he filled the
glass of his heart with the trickle dripping from the emissions of Paradise,
allured by which, he cried out: Draw me after you; let us run in the scent
of your ointments (Sgs 1:3). For
even if the Gospel, through the shortness of His office (since, like a girded
rooster, He speedily runs with such obstinacy that He greets no one along the
way), failed to express the fragrance of His mouth, which was driven by a
blowing east wind, yet it is to be believed and slightly understood that,
beyond all perfumes, those vestments, which had become white like snow,
scattered the scent of sweetness on all those present; for so the vision of His
sunning would cause less joy if, on His part, He did not communicate a generous
blessing to the nose; nor would an integral brotherhood be preserved if, the
nose remaining famished, the eye alone were satiated.
Therefore,
He poured out upon Peter and his companions rivers of His oil, not in one form,
but in many, so that they would carry the five thirsting senses on one so
solemn bier, and, intoxicated, they would say, Lord, it is good for
us to be here; this is to be noted, since He touches what is bodily in a
varied way, and remakes what is spiritual variedly. For, because of their lacking, rarely and
rare will you find bodies that serve the many senses at one time by one habit;
for the diverse senses or appetites have diverse ends in their delight or
satiety, so that they always require either diverse times or diverse delights
at the same time. Diversely do the
spiritual gifts fulfill all the varieties of desires together and at once, and,
in good truth, as this is not a lie that deceives, so this is no diminution of
fullness which needs subsidiary alternation or vicarious disquiet.
And,
behold, Moses and Elijah appeared, speaking with Him (Mt 17:3). Here approaches the vagabond question that
frequently circles about the gyre of heaven, asking why Moses and Elijah came,
in the body or in the spirit, before the rest, since they were speaking with
Him. But what urges on this question, to
which no certain response can be given?
And if it contains desirable marrow, the hard mouth and solid gum of
whelps can assuredly gnaw on this, but they cannot penetrate it. The appetite longs to crack it, but power
everywhere fails to extract the guarded marrow; however, since shameless labor
conquers all,[4]
it is sweet to beat at it and to go around the surrounding city, so that this
honest solicitude might, at the least, find solace in labor.
Therefore,
it occurs to the investigating soul that Moses and Elijah were mountain-men,
and fleers of the consort of men; on mountains, they knew many things, with
angelic helpers from God, and they dedicated their lives to solitude, as much
as possible. Wherefore, as if by custom,
in that they had, by now, celebrated many councils with Jesus in the mountains,
the angelic ministry having informed them of this solemn council of the
Transfiguration, they were eager to be present at it. By reason of such shining luminaries and the
glorification of the assumed humanity, which was to be preached, he whose eyes had
never gone blind nor whose teeth set grinding, Moses, ran to the
Transfiguration; for this reason, he, too, whose flesh had not seen the
corruption of death, whose mortality, by an almost singular privilege, not
consumed by the fiery chariot, nor absorbed by death, now enjoyed the region of
the immortals; and he nearly conquered death, by an unwonted and long delay.[5]
Perhaps,
too, Jesus, keeping vigil in prayers on the mountains, was used to their
presence, and had prefixed the day, so that He would ask both of them about
their dissimilar states, according to the assumed humanity, about which was
more powerful, the state of Moses, denuded of the body, or of Elijah, still
living in the body. For it was in Jesus’
power to choose what He willed, namely, to hold to the proposition of either,
without doubt. Indeed, one was seen to
be just according to the person assuming and assumed; the other, truly, was
undoubtedly necessary because of the office of patronage, and the negotiation
of quarrels, and in the cause of the ones who sweat; yet that meditator
borrowed from both, according to their dispensation, so that He first put off
his mortal body without death, by glorification, not by a perpetual transition,
retaining both something of the old and something changed, something from
His new and future state, so that He would draw from the change of Moses and the
retention of Elijah.
There
is another reason why Moses and Elijah were seen at the Transfiguration with
the Lord; for the assumed humanity did not refuse to have witnesses, before men
as well as before angels, since it hung from His own will either to die for
man, and thus to enter into His glory, or, breaking off the negotiation of our
redemption, without interposing death, to return to the right hand of the
Father. Therefore, everything was to be
done in council; He ordered men, as authenticators, to be present at His
transfiguration, so that Moses, as their author, would convince the unbelieving
Jews, while Elijah, who is to come at the end of the world, would protest, with
all assurance, that Christ is to be adored, not the Antichrist;[6] there
are also other reasons which have been expounded by the holy Fathers, or which
remain to be expounded in their times.
Speaking
with Him, it says, they preserve discipline, nor do they exceed the limits
of the mandate; they do not speak to the apostles, but with Jesus, since they
did not come to Him here in order to hear worldly rumors, or to refer to things
not yet to be explained, namely, the written, holy canons of the Passion,
Resurrection, and Ascension of the Lord.
About what and to Whom they came, they speak; and they place their
fingers over their mouths, lest they speak of works, I do not say of men, but
neither of angels. Perhaps, by his
death, Moses pleads for the people of the Jews, whose imminent ruins he
foresees, so that at least a remnant might be saved; perhaps, not laying aside
his zeal, Elijah discerns the conquest which was to occur under Titus and
Vespasian;[7]
yet we hold to the secret of their colloquy, we do not discuss it, since the
glory of God is to conceal a word (Prv 25:2).
It
follows: And behold, a lightful cloud overshadowed them (Mt 17:5); the Gospel
reading is to be studied earnestly, and, from it, the course of our oration is
to be woven; for, not from our own threads, but from its, ought we to
weave a tabernacle for the God of Jacob;[8]
for God does not dwell in things made by hands (Acts 7:48), that is, in those
which were devised by human ingenuity, without grace, through which the
knowledge or love of God is acquired.
For God does not dwell in things made by hands, being made known through
inane philosophy and through foolish fables or genealogies and interminable
questions; whence it is that a grove—that is, quibbling and obscure sophistry—is
forbidden to be planted next to the altar of God (Dt 16:21).[9] Indeed, only those authenticated words of the
prophets and apostles, and the Scriptures confirmed by ecclesiastical
authority, are to be read and sung in church; for these are like a lightful
cloud, that is, the divine Scripture, or the Catholic Church, is a lightful
cloud.
The
Scripture is a cloud for three reasons: because it cools in the heat of
temptation, teaching them a befitting remedy; it overshadows in the anguish of
persecution, promising prizes to those to whom the passions of this time are
not as worthy as the future glory which will be revealed in us (Rom 8:18); it
rains in the time of dryness, putting infernal evaporations and smoking joints
before our eyes; wherefore the summery and healthful exhalations from the
region above the stars, which fully fill the purest and most blessed spirits,
are ineffably fragrant and not troubled by a little cough; a lightful cloud,
it says, overshadowed them. The Psalmist
explores and implores this overshadowing, saying, set a shadow over my head
in the day of war (Ps 140:7); the day of war is all of this life, since
warfare is the life of man upon earth (Job 7:1), where there is the battle
against flesh and blood, against princes and powers, against the leaders of these
darknesses, against the spiritual iniquities in the heavens (Eph 6:12).
An
iron sword will not be enough against these, unless a lightful cloud—that is,
the grace which has given birth to the divine Scripture from its bowels—overshadows
you; nor will it suffer its offspring to be violated by this; indeed, through
the breasts of the Old and New Testament, it expresses as many drops as the trickle
from its womb, with which the virgin Mary was impregnated; by which its
adoptive progeny was regenerated, through the lightful cloud, which is the
Church; for divine grace fills both breasts, both the Church and the Scripture,
to the full, with equal measure; wherefore two-fold is the lactation, but one
the education of the children.
Therefore, the Church is the cloud which sojourns from the Lord; that is
lightful which is always made fruitful by the Holy Spirit; she overshadows her
children as a hen her chicks, lest they yield to adversity, lest they fall away
in persecution, lest they are endangered by the delay of the prize.
[1]
The Hebrew root of the name Horeb—ḥ-r-b—is also used in words
meaning “wasteland,” “desolate,” “desert,” “dryness,” “drought,” etc. Hence the name Horeb might have been
chosen to mean the “mountain of the wilderness,” though Peter is focusing on
the “dryness” connection. See The
Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon (Peabody, MA: Henrickson
Publishers, Inc., 2005), 351-352.
[2] In
Latin, there is a pun here on saccum (“sackcloth”) and soccum. Typically, soccum would be the
accusative of soccus, meaning a slipper or a loose-fitting shoe, and, by
extension, comedy, since comedians wore such shoes on stage. (In the medieval era, the term became applied
to stockings as well, hence the English sock.) It seems Peter means it in the latter sense:
instead of the tragic suffering of the Passion, Jesus would turn it into
comedy. In the medieval era, soccum
or socum could sometimes be a form of socna or soca, meaning
“a lord’s right to hold court in a jurisdiction,” but this was a specifically
Anglo-Saxon usage, being derived from an Anglo-Saxon term. See J.F. Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis
Lexicon Minus (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1976), 975. Saccus can refer to either the sack or
the sacklcloth; thus the same word appears in the following (long) sentence to
describe Benjamin’s sack.
[3]
Peter has a pun here between lusit (“played with”) and illusit
(“made a game of,” “made sport of,” “mocked,” “fooled”).
[4] A
slight variant of a line from Virgil’s Georgics I.145-146: Labor
omnia vincit / improbus. Improbus
typically has a negative connotation (poor quality, improper, wicked,
dishonest, impudent, shameless, violent, excessive, immoderate, etc.); however,
it can also mean “restless,” “persistent,” etc.
The latter sense is usually understood in regards to this saying, since
it comes in the midst of Virgil’s dire praise of the hard work of farming:
“Steady labor conquers all, and necessity urging in hard conditions…and unless
you, with assiduous hoes, harass the grass and, with sound, frighten birds,
and, with sickle, press upon the dark field’s shadows and, with vows, call upon
the rain, alas! another’s great hoard you’ll behold in vain, and, beating the
oak, you’ll soothe your hunger in the woods” (I.145-146, 155-159).
[5]
Here Peter affirms the tradition that Elijah was not to escape death
completely; rather, his death was “delayed” after being taken up by the fiery chariot. Peter agreed with the tradition that Enoch
and Elijah were the two witnesses of Rev 11, who are to come back at the end of
time in order to finally die; at the very least, he mentions Elijah’s apocalyptic
coming two paragraphs below.
[6] A
reference to the two witnesses of Rev 11 who, by tradition, were Enoch and
Elijah.
[7] This
refers to the Siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD, which resulted in the destruction of
the Temple. Vespasian began the assault—whose
goal was to suppress Jewish revolt—then, when he returned to Rome to be declared
Emperor, he handed the reins of the assault over to his son Titus.
[8] A
reference to the tents (or tabernacles) that Peter desired to set up on Mount Tabor
(Mt 17:4).
[9] The
grove described in this verse is one that is sacred to some deity (lucus
in the Vulgate, though Peter uses nemus here); it is thus a prohibition
against idolatry (modern translations often explain this grove as an “Asherah
pole,” which was dedicated to a Canaanite goddess). Peter focuses instead on the thick clustering
of trees, likening it to a choking thicket of sophisms.
Translation ©2023 Brandon P. Otto. Licensed via CC BY-NC. Feel free to redistribute non-commercially, as long as credit is given to the translator.
