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

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SERMONS. j j
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Damascenus takes occasion to run over the command
ments, as being part
of that divine utterance to
which we are to listen ;
and he thus concludes :
"These ordinances of God let us keep with all
watchfulness, that we too may luxuriate in His
divine beauty, and may have our fill in tasting His
sweetness, both in this life, as far as is possible for
those who are weighed down with this earthly taber
nacle of the body, and hereafter in greater clearness
and purity ;
when the righteous shine forth as the sitn,
and when, released from the constraints of the body
they will be as the angels, living imperishably with
the Lord, in the great and glorious revelation from
heaven of our Lord, and God, and Saviour, Jesus
Christ Himself; to whom be glory and dominion,
now, henceforth, and for ever. Amen.
The sermon on the Withered Fig-Tree, which follows,
though considerably shorter than that on the Trans
figuration, takes a wider sweep, and is not so close
an exposition of its subject. From the title, it would
appear to have been delivered in a church of the
Holy Resurrection," presumably in Jerusalem. At
the outset, the preacher says that he was moved to
utterance by
"the subsistent Word of God the
Father, who departed not from the bosom of the
Father, and yet was conceived incomprehensibly in
the Virgin s womb ;
who for
my sake became what I
am ; who, though free from passions in His godhead,
put on a human body of like passions with myself;
who, while riding on the chariots of the cherubim,
yet seated Himself, when on earth, upon the foal of
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