st. john of damascus (676-749 - Cristo Raul

"
one
"
"
SERMONS. 103
another on the
we
Transfiguration" might na
conclude that it was delivered in the church
turally
built on Mount Tabor to commemorate that event.
And, once more, from an expression which occurs in
the second sermon on the Passing of the Virgin
that he had continued his
Mary," we may suppose
labour of preaching to the limits of old age. For
he there speaks of "bringing flowers to the Queen
in the winter of his eloquence, and preparing his
aged speech to vie with others in pronouncing her
encomiums." There being thus little to give any
local colouring or accidental interest to the dis
courses, we must be content to study them simply as
trace the reflection of
compositions, in which we may
the author s mind. 1
1
Under the general heading of
Homilice," there are in
cluded in Lequien s edition (Migne, vol. iii., pp. 544-816),
thirteen discourses and a fragment of a fourteenth the
;
genuineness of some of them being more than doubtful. The
first in order, and one of the most important, is that on the
Transfiguration. The second, less striking in style, but in many
respects a very interesting one, is on the Withered Fig Tree.
The third, which has been sometimes included among the
works of St. Chrysostom, though apparently without sufficient m
reason, is on Good Friday. The fourth, and longest of all,
and one about the genuineness of which there can be no doubt,
is on Holy Saturday. Then come two on the Annunciation ;
of which the first is only found in a Latin version, while the
genuineness of both is discredited. Of the remaining seven
two are on the Nativity of the Virgin Mary three on her
;
death, or is
"falling asleep
a
;" panegyric on St. Chrysos
tom ;
and the last a similar one on St. Barbara. The short
fragment counted as a fourteenth piece hardly deserves separate
notice, being probably only a fragment, in altered guise, of one of
the sermons on the Nativity of the Virgin already mentioned.