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

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SERMONS. 115
physicians say that opposites are the cures of opposites,
1 Christ overthrows opposites by opposites;
pleasure by labour, haughtiness by humiliation (c. ii).
The intensity of Christ s love to man is next shown by
His hungering early in the morning, as He returned
from Bethany to Jerusalem. For we think of hunger
rather as following hours of labour, than as felt at
the opening of the day. Christ was not really in
need of food, but the circumstances of the parable
were adjusted to set forth its one central teaching.
came, then, to the fig-tree, being an-hungered.
The fig-tree was an emblem of human nature.
The
fruit of this tree is sweet, but its leaves are harsh,
useless, and only
fit for burning. Even so the
nature of man had a most sweet fruit to bear, that of
virtue, for which it was ordained to be prolific by God.
And through its unfruitfulness in respect of virtue, it
gained its harshness of leaves. For what is harsher
than the cares of life ? In this way our first
parents, when by their disobedience they lost that
grace of God which covered them as a garment,
sewed fig-leaves together and made themselves aprons.
They became environed, that is,
with the cares and
anxieties of a fallen life; for the decree had gone
1
This, the opposite maxim to the similia similibus curantur
of the homoeopathist, was a favourite -one with Dean Colet.
"Let this be a settled and established maxim," he writes
("Lectures on Romans," 1873, p. 87), "that evil cannot be
removed except by means of . .
good
. For whatever seeks to
conquer must needs make itself as unlike as possible to that
which it seeks to conquer, since victory is gained in every
instance, not by what is like, but by what is unlike.
I 2