Commentary on Ezekiel 37 by Fr. Hector Pinto
Introduction: The Promise of Restoration
Previously, God promised that He would restore the sons of Israel from the Babylonian captivity to the land of promise and to Jerusalem. There, by "Babylon" He signifies the world and sin; by "Jerusalem," however, the Catholic Church and grace—which in this life exists nowhere except in the Church.
In this chapter, God promises the same thing, but in a different manner of speaking. For just as He previously called men entangled in the snares of crime "dry bones," and the "field"—that is, the world, which He had earlier signified by the name "Babylon"—was full of them, so now He promises that these dry bones shall be raised up and brought back to Jerusalem. In this, He intends to show that He will snatch sinners from infidelity and impious perversity, wash away the stains of their guilt and the lurking places of their crimes by His own blood, and establish them in His Church.
Thus, this chapter confirms the faith of the preceding promise, drawing an argument from the resurrection of bodies—a most certain reality. The union of the ten tribes with the two is shown forth; the coming of Christ into the world is predicted; He is called their eternal King and Shepherd, the divine ruler of all.
Ezek 37:1: "The hand of the Lord was upon me…"
"The hand of the Lord was upon me": that is, the spirit of prophecy came upon me; I was inspired by the prophetic spirit. This is a Hebraism, which he also used in chapters one and three, in which passages "hand" is taken for the spirit of prophesying; for which reason he said in chapter 11: "The spirit of the Lord fell upon me."
Perhaps by "the hand of the Lord" he understands the Son of God, who is called "the hand of the Lord" for this reason: because all things were made through Him. For the same cause, He is called "the arm of the Lord" by Isaiah, who says: "The Lord has revealed His arm in the sight of all the nations" (Isaiah 52:10)—as if to say: He will send from heaven His eternal, only-begotten Son, and men shall see Him through whom all things were made. And again: "Who has believed our report, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?" (Isaiah 53:1)—as if to say: Who will believe our words, and who are they to whom it shall be made known that He who is about to endure the highest sufferings for the human race is the Creator and Governor of all things?
Or thus: "The hand of the Lord was upon me, and He led me…"—that is, I seemed to myself to be carried away by the hand of a certain figure representing God, and to be led into a field, etc.
"And He brought me out in the Spirit of the Lord": This refers to "the hand," so that the sense is: The hand of the Lord brought me out in the Spirit of the Lord. Or it refers to "the Lord," as if to say: I was inspired by the Spirit of the Lord, who is the Lord, and He brought me out, etc.
That particle "of the Lord" may also be rendered in the nominative case, as the divine poet [Virgil] might: "And the Lord brought me in the Spirit." The sense is: I was not led bodily from place to place, but all this was shown to me imaginatively through the Spirit. For I seemed to myself to go out into a certain field, and in the Spirit of God I saw a hand which was leading me.
"And He set me down in the midst of the field, which was full of bones": He describes enigmatically the liberation of the Jews, and rightly compares them to dry bones. For just as dry bones cannot of themselves receive a soul and return to life, but must necessarily be aided by divine favor, so the Hebrews, established in Babylonian servitude, could neither return to their homeland by their own power nor be freed from miserable captivity unless God miraculously delivered them.
Moreover, since captivity signifies sin, and those who were captives are compared to dry bones, there is no doubt that by "dry bones" sinners are understood. And rightly so: for it cannot happen that the impious be justified by their own powers. When they return from the death of sin to the life of justice, this is attributed to the mercy of God, who bestows grace upon the sinner.
Our works, done in mortal sin, do not merit condignly the grace by which we are justified when we are made just from being impious. This indeed is what Catholic teachers assert: that works do not merit the first justification. "If it is by grace, it is no longer by works; otherwise," to use the words of the divine Paul, "grace is no longer grace" (Romans 11:6). And elsewhere: "Not by works of justice which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us" (Titus 3:5).
Nevertheless, it is necessary that for this kind of justification the movement of free will concur. Hence St. Augustine says: "He who created you without you, will not save you without you." For this justification does not occur without a good work and a movement of the will accepting divine grace.
However, good works preceding the first justification, although they do not merit justification itself, are nevertheless provocations of divine mercy and dispose man to receive it. But after justification, when we are established in sanctifying grace, we merit condignly by applying ourselves to good works and acts of virtue; yet the foundation of our merit is placed in divine mercy.
As a copper ring adorned with a most precious diamond is of the highest value—not on account of the copper, but on account of the inestimable gem included in the copper itself—so our good works, done in grace, merit eternal life not because they are ours (for thus, like copper, they are of little worth), but because they are done in grace and are marked, as it were, with an inestimable diamond: the merit of the death and passion of Christ, to whom we adhere through grace, and who, out of His mercy, has promised eternal life to those who do good works in grace.
For this reason, in the Gospel eternal life is called the reward of the just, because they merit it by their good works. Hence St. Paul, in his second letter to Timothy, after enumerating his labors, adds: "Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of justice, which the Lord, the just judge, will render to me in that day; and not only to me, but also to all who love His coming" (2 Timothy 4:8). He calls the reward of his works—that is, eternal life—a crown of justice, because he merited it; and he says that God will give it to him because He is a just judge.
Note well: he did not say "which the Lord will give me," but "which the Lord will render to me." For "to render" is to give what is owed. Hence in the Epistle to the Romans: "Render therefore to all their dues" (Romans 13:7). Wishing to show this truth, Christ says in Matthew: "The Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will render to every man according to his works" (Matthew 16:27). Observe: He does not say "He will give," but "He will render."
And again, speaking of the reward of those who have labored well in the vineyard—that is, in the Church—He says: "Call the laborers and render to them their hire" (Matthew 20:8). "Hire" is that which is owed by merit.
You see, therefore, that works are required for eternal salvation, through which we obtain it—not from the dignity of the works in themselves, but from those works joined with faith, hope, and charity, through which, by the mercy of God thus covenanting with us, we are said to merit eternal life.
For although someone may have faith, yet if he is bound by mortal sin, his faith does not profit him for obtaining eternal salvation. The faith by which we merit eternal life is that which, as the Apostle says, "works through charity" (Galatians 5:6). For he himself says: "If I should have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing" (1 Corinthians 13:2).
This indeed is what St. James the Apostle says in his canonical epistle: "You see that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only" (James 2:24). He is speaking of the second justification, concerning which St. John says in the Apocalypse: "He that is just, let him be justified still; and he that is holy, let him be sanctified still" (Apocalypse 22:11). For by works, with grace joined, we merit salvation and are called just.
Nor does this sentiment of James contradict the doctrine of St. Paul, who in the Epistle to the Romans says that a man is not justified by works. For there the Apostle is speaking of the first justification, when a sinner from being impious is made just by the grace of God; James is speaking of the second justification, as John also speaks in the Apocalypse. Paul refutes the error of the Jews, who thought they had obtained that grace by the merits of good works, and that those who had been worshippers of idols and had not applied themselves to the observance of the old law were not to be received into the Gospel. But Paul teaches that man is not justified by works preceding faith and the first [justification], but by the grace of God.
But since there were some who, from this doctrine of Paul misunderstood, despised good works and affirmed that faith alone was sufficient for obtaining eternal life, St. James wished to show them the truth of the doctrine of blessed Paul: that it is to be understood of the first justification, not however of the second. For if after the first justification someone should abandon good works and defile himself with crimes, he will lose [justification], faith remaining—which without works is dead (James 2:26).
You see, therefore, that the sentiments of these two [Apostles] do not contradict one another, but rather cohere most fully; and that the impious do not merit condignly the first justification, even if afterwards, when they are established in grace, they merit eternal life by their good works.
But the heretics of our time, rejecting the very word "merit," contend that there is no merit, that this word ought to be utterly deleted, and that our good works merit nothing—indeed, that they are sins. Which indeed is not to be wondered at: for since, separated from faith and excluded from the Church, they are blind and have defiled themselves with vices, and have given themselves over to Satan—and to use the words [of Scripture], "God has given them over to a reprobate sense" (Romans 1:28)—what wonder is it that they say there is no merit, since they themselves merit nothing good?
The word "merit" is [used by] the holy doctors: Jerome, Augustine, Ambrose, Gregory, and the rest of the Fathers, who were witnesses by sanctity of life and evidence of miracles, and who excelled by acumen of intellect and celebrity of doctrine and wisdom. The books of theologians, both ancient and recent, are full of this expression; the schools are full of it; the writings of the ancients, which are consecrated to memory, are full of it. The thing itself speaks, shines by examples, is clearer than the light of day.
Nevertheless, they dare to assert that this word was never heard in the Church, nor found among the doctors nor in the sacred Scriptures. O tolerable error! O shameless fiction! They do not know the passages of the holy doctors—unless they are innumerable. The word is found everywhere in the books of Catholic Fathers as well as Greeks; Sacred Scripture itself uses this word—remarkably, in chapter 6 of Ecclesiasticus, which for this reason I have judged worthy of annotation. For in that place it is written: "Every mercy will make room for each one according to the merit of his works" (Ecclesiasticus 6:16, Vulgate).
But why do I consume time in refuting so manifest an error of the Lutherans?
Return to the Exegesis of Ezekiel
But that the discourse may return to the point from which it was drawn: since many of the Jews who were detained in the Babylonian captivity were constricted by crimes, our Ezekiel rightly calls them—and indeed all wicked sinners, polluted with deadly stains—"dry bones," which cannot of themselves return to life without divine favor, just as the impious cannot be justified without divine grace.
Understanding this, the royal psalmist was singing: "The spirit goes forth and does not return" (Psalm 103:4)—as if to say: Of himself, indeed, man can commit a mortal crime and depart from God; but by himself, unaided by the special help of God, he cannot return to God. For grace is a quality which, if it departs, does not of itself return.
Hence Ezekiel, chapter 2: "The spirit entered into me after He had spoken to me, and He set me upon my feet." And in the Canticle [of Canticles] 1: "Draw me after You." And Jeremiah in the Lamentations: "Convert us, O Lord, to Yourself, and we shall be converted." And St. Paul: "By the grace of God I am what I am" (1 Corinthians 15:10). And Christ our God: "No one comes to Me unless the Father draws him" (John 6:44).
And since by "the field" Ezekiel understands Babylon in this passage, and by "Babylon" the world—which, as St. John says, "is wholly set in wickedness" (1 John 5:19)—it is openly concluded that by "a field full of dead bones" a world full of sinners is signified.
Ezek 37:2 "And He led me around among them in a circuit": that I might see them more fully. God did not wish me to be idle, but to walk—not among the bones, touching them, but in their circuit, lest I be contaminated by their touch. It was permitted to see those bones and to walk in their circuit, but not to touch them or oneself by contact. For it was prohibited by the law to touch dead bodies.
So likewise it is permitted to a just and wise man to speak with the impious and wicked, to deter them from vices and exhort them to virtue; but it is not permitted to associate familiarly with them, lest he be defiled by their crimes. Understanding this, Moses was saying: "Depart from the tents of these impious men, and touch nothing that belongs to them, lest you be involved in their sins" (cf. Numbers 16:26).
Just as one who from a ship observes the shipwreck of another can help him in some way by a plank or a rope, but ought not to involve himself with him in such a way that both are overwhelmed, so he who excels in justice and wisdom ought to bring help to the most wicked men, marked with the stains of crimes, laboring in the whirlpool of vices—by words, counsels, and examples—and in some ways aid them lest they be submerged; but so cautiously and wisely that he is not contaminated by their evils.
"And behold, they were very many upon the face of the field, and exceedingly dry": that is, these [bones] were many and unburied, and by the antiquity of time exceedingly dried up. He wishes to signify that there are many sinners, supremely vicious and contaminated by crimes through a long duration of time. For the drier bones are, the more they indicate that they are far from life; so sinners, the more they are called "dry," the further they are understood to be from grace, which is the life of the soul.
Ezek 37:3: "And He said to me…"
"And He said to me": doubtless the Lord, or the Angel who was leading me: "Son of man, shall these bones live?"
Ezek 37:4-6 "Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord!" God wished to bestow life upon them; but that they might live, it was necessary that they hear the word of the Lord.
It is evident that the word of God has great power for converting sinners to Christ. St. Paul, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, says: "For the word of God is living and effectual, and more penetrating than any two-edged sword" (Hebrews 4:12). The word of God is compared to a sword cutting on both sides. Isaiah introduces Christ speaking thus: "He has made My mouth like a sharp sword" (Isaiah 49:2). This is the sword of which the Apostle says in the Epistle to the Ephesians: "The sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God" (Ephesians 6:17).
Nevertheless, that passage of St. Paul to the Hebrews may also be understood of Christ, who is the Word of God, of whom John says: "In the beginning was the Word" (John 1:1)—even if there are not lacking those who understand it of that word of which Christ says: "Blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it" (Luke 11:28).
If we magnify and venerate the garments of the saints because they touched their bodies—and rightly so—how much more ought we to venerate those words which proceeded from the mouth of Christ, which went forth from His heart, by which the saints themselves acquired holiness? O divine words of Christ! O relics most holy, so precious and so little esteemed!
By one sermon of St. Peter, three thousand men believed in Christ (Acts 2:41). Behold the admirable force and virtue of the word of God! For this reason, the Apostles, convoking the multitude of disciples—as St. Luke narrates in the Acts—uttered these words: "It is not reasonable that we should leave the word of God and serve tables" (Acts 6:2). And although those tables were for the poor and widows, nevertheless they preferred the work of preaching the word of God to them.
Ezek 37:7-8: "And behold, a commotion…"
"And behold, a commotion": That is, a certain attrition. But still it did not have life, because detestation of crimes and attrition can exist without contrition, and consequently without grace. For it can happen that someone detests crimes and is attrite, yet still exists in mortal sin, which nevertheless is removed only through true contrition.
True contrition requires three things, to use the words of the Scholastics: namely, sorrow for committed sins above all that is odious; a purpose of avoiding sins above all that is avoidable; and a purpose of confessing or making satisfaction, if the man has not confessed.
These words can be referred literally to the bones themselves when they joined together. There are those who say this commotion should be referred to the disturbance of the Babylonians, stirred up by the Persians and Medes, when they conquered Babylon and sent the Jews free to their homeland. And thus "each bone was joined to its joint," because each one adhered to his tribe and family. And in this way they were returned to Judea and established in their former dignity.
Ezek 37:9: "Come from the four winds, O Spirit, and breathe upon these slain…"
"Come from the four winds, O Spirit, and breathe upon these slain": The Jews, who are compared to dry bones and slain men, were captives in every region of Chaldea: some to the Eastern quarter, some to the Western, others to the South, others to the North. Therefore the Prophet invokes the Holy Spirit to come to raise them up from the four winds—that is, from the four quarters of the world in which they were exiling—and to grant them strength, spirit, and boldness.
For they were so weakened, broken, and terrified that they did not think themselves able to return to Judea, even if Cyrus gave them permission to return. For this reason, they did not dare to attempt what they believed they could by no means obtain. But when the Spirit came to them, they recovered their spirit, by which they betook themselves to their homeland, where they restored the city and the temple.
But through this reduction of the Jews to their homeland, as we have said, and through these bones recalled to life, the justification of the impious and the redemption of the human race through Christ is understood. For this reason, the divine poet invokes the Holy Spirit to come from the four winds—that is, from everywhere, who is everywhere—and to gather and unite Christians from the four parts of the orb into one Catholic Church, in the unity of one faith, in the Spirit of God.
St. Ambrose, in Book 3 on The Holy Spirit, explaining this passage, understands this spirit to be the Holy Spirit. Perhaps by the advent of the Spirit from the four winds, the divine poet wished to signify that He comes occultly, and that His advent in certain respects is somewhat compared to the qualities of wind. In the same way, Christ says in John: "The Spirit breathes where He will, and you hear His voice, but you do not know whence He comes or whither He goes" (John 3:8).
Although in that passage in John the word spiritus is understood by many interpreters as "wind," nevertheless all affirm that Christ used a certain similitude on account of the agreement of the name and of many things, just as here in Ezekiel. For just as wind is borne freely by its impulse, constrained by no human laws, but breathes everywhere, penetrating the air, the earth, and the sea, and sometimes the very bowels of the earth, so the Holy Spirit is free in His operations; no one can compel Him, no one can restrain Him.
He has mercy on whom He wills; He pursues with favor whom He wills; whom He wills, He hardens. He can make a vessel of mercy from a vessel of wrath, and from vile clay a great and precious vessel, and from abject material an illustrious work. He raised David to royal dignity and imparted to him the spirit of prophesying; He constituted Peter, a fisherman, an Apostle and prince of the Apostles; He made Matthew, a publican, an Evangelist; Paul, a persecutor, a teacher of the Gentiles and a vessel of election.
And just as wind, although invisible, nevertheless accomplishes great things—for it casts down towers, uproots trees, and splits the rocks of cliffs—so the Holy Spirit sometimes casts down those who are elated by pride and established in illustrious dignity, so that they may recognize their fragility, the variety of the world, and the power of the divine numen. That this happened to Nebuchadnezzar and Antiochus and many others, the divine letters testify.
He can also pluck up sterile trees—that is, impious sinners—by the roots, according to that word of the Psalmist: "Therefore God shall destroy you forever; He shall pluck you out and remove you from your tabernacle, and your root from the land of the living" (Psalm 51:7). He can also convert the boxwood-hard and hard hearts of men and bring them to penance, just as He did with the thief, the woman sinner, and Zacchaeus.
Moreover, just as wind diffuses itself through all things, so the Holy Spirit fills all things, according to that which is written in the Book of Wisdom: "The Spirit of the Lord has filled the orb of the earth" (Wisdom 1:7). He was present to the three boys in the fiery furnace, to Daniel in the lions' den, to Moses in the desert, to Jonah in the belly of the whale, to Peter in prison, to Paul in the depths of the sea. He knows all things, penetrates all things, and, to use the words of the Apostle in the First Epistle to the Corinthians: "The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God" (1 Corinthians 2:10).
Then, just as wind is sometimes tranquil and gentle, sometimes violent and strong, so the Holy Spirit refreshes some with sweetness and tranquility, as Peter and John; but others He casts down and prostrates with impulse, as King Manasseh and Saul of Tarsus.
The impious Manasseh, when he found himself deprived of his kingdom and cast into Babylonian captivity, recognized God and fled to Him suppliant. But Saul, prostrated and captured in sight, opened his eyes, and for Him whom he pursued with hatred, he endured most bitter tortures; he intrepidly exposed himself to the darts of enemies, and finally underwent death itself with a cheerful and erect spirit.
Finally, just as we hear the winds when we know not whence they come or whither they go, since their defined place of origin and departure is not explored or known to us, so we sometimes hear the internal voice of the Holy Spirit and understand that we are taught and carried away by Him; we know not how He directs our soul, who is everywhere, or how He departs from there.
For these reasons, I think the Prophet said: "Come from the four winds, O Spirit, and breathe upon these slain."
Ezek 37:10: "And the spirit entered into them…"
"And the spirit entered into them": That is, the vital spirit entered into them, and they lived. By "spirit" he understands the grace of the Holy Spirit—as if to say: God imparted grace to them; they lived, when before they were dead through sin, indeed dry bones of the dead.
The impious, contaminated by crimes, are called "dead"; but when by divine favor they leave sins and obtain grace, they are named "living." Man, says the divine Scripture in the Book of Wisdom, "kills his own soul by malice" (Wisdom 1:11). From this you gather that the impious man is a homicide of himself. St. James in his canonical epistle says: "Sin, when it is completed, generates death" (James 1:15)—as if to say: Sin is then mortal and generates death when it has been fully deliberated, when the will has perfectly consented to impious concupiscence, whether it goes forth into exterior act or not.
Concerning this, Ezekiel said above: "The soul that sins, it shall die" (Ezekiel 18:4). From which words it is proved that the life of the impious is death. Hence Solomon says in Ecclesiastes: "I saw the wicked buried, who even while they yet lived were in the holy place, and were praised in the city as if they were works of the just" (Ecclesiastes 8:10). This is a certain horrible monster: a soul dead in a living body. How can they be living who are buried in the tomb of vices?
When God in the law commanded that no one should touch a dead man, He wished in the first place to prohibit anyone from associating familiarly with impious men; for those who are polluted by crimes are called "dead." We often think we are looking upon men when they are not men, but sepulchres of men. In men we do not see [life], but corpses. We behold certain statues living as to sense, dead as to soul. We behold dry bones placed in the field—that is, in the world.
But blessed are they who hear the word of God, that they may rise from vices. "The hour comes," says Christ in John, "and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live" (John 5:25). Just as lightning touching a sword leaves the sheath intact outside but wears away the iron within, so mortal sin leaves the body alive outside but kills the soul within, separating from it grace, which is the life of the soul.
Ezek 37:10 (Continued): "And they lived…"
"And they lived": The bones returned to life. The divine poet wished by these words to signify the resurrection of the dead, and it is a certain evident prophecy of the return to life. Since in the preceding chapter he showed the ineffable goods of eternal life, he wished here to show the resurrection, and that just men, raised in body and soul, shall obtain those goods.
Concerning this return to life, Daniel says: "Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt" (Daniel 12:2). Or, as others translate from the Hebrew: "and some to shame and eternal confusion." Moreover, what he says, "Many of those who sleep," he wishes to signify all the dead, whom because they are many, he calls "many."
Christ our God seems to explain this place, saying in John: "The hour comes in which all who are in the tombs shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and shall come forth—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, but those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment" (John 5:28–29). This is a paraphrase of Daniel.
Isaiah also says: "Your dead shall live, my dead bodies shall arise" (Isaiah 26:19). The same [Prophet] introduces Christ speaking in this manner: "Let the nations arise and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat, for there I will sit to judge all the nations round about" (cf. Joel 3:2). And Job: "I know that my Redeemer lives, and in the last day I shall rise out of the earth. And I shall be clothed again with my skin, and in my flesh I shall see my God, my Savior. Whom I myself shall see, and my eyes shall behold, and not another" (Job 19:25–27).
St. Paul in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, throughout the fifteenth chapter, proves the resurrection of the flesh, and concluding says: "We shall all indeed rise again, but we shall not all be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet… For the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall rise again incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality" (1 Corinthians 15:51–53). He asserts this in the Epistle to the Romans, chapter 8, and the First to the Thessalonians, chapter 4, and in other places.
But since St. Paul says the resurrection will be in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, it seems we must ask why Ezekiel says here that sinews and flesh came up upon them, and skin was stretched over them above, and afterwards says the spirit entered into the bones and bestowed life upon them. All these things seem to imply that the resurrection will be successive.
To this objection I respond that I think all these things which Ezekiel narrates happened simultaneously, but could not be explained simultaneously by the divine Prophet. Do not understand, however, that "moment" signifies a part of time exempt from time, in which philosophers say nothing happens; but [it signifies] the briefest time. For an "instant" is not time, indeed nor a part of time, as Aristotle asserts in Book 4 of the Physics, chapter 11, but that by which parts of time are connected, which, according to Aristotle in Book 6 of the Physics, chapter 3, is indivisible, so that nothing moves in it.
The Apostle therefore does not speak of this instant, but of a small delay of time in which there will be a gathering of ashes. And the resurrection of the dead is immense, for it is the virtue of God which will work so admirable a thing in so brief a time. St. Ambrose explains this place of Ezekiel concerning the resurrection of the dead in the book On Faith and Resurrection, and Tertullian in the book On the Resurrection of the Flesh.
Ezek 37:10 (Conclusion): "And they stood upon their feet…"
"And they stood upon their feet": That is, they rose and stood erect. But since the divine Prophet explains the justification of the impious by a dual argument from the dead, it must be said that those men, after the return to the life of grace, stood upon their feet—that is, upon their affections—under which, when they were bound by crimes, they were lying. How to "stand upon feet" we showed in chapter 2, explaining those words: "Son of man, stand upon your feet."
Ezek 37:11: "These bones are the whole house of Israel…"
"These bones are the whole house of Israel": That is, by these bones the Israelitic people is signified. For since I show you that I am about to raise all the dead, what wonder is it if I can help the Hebrews and recall to their homeland those who are detained dead in the regions of Chaldea as if in sepulchres?
"They themselves say: Our bones are dried up": Thus the audacity of the Jews is broken and their industry languishes, so that they say all their strength has vanished, and for that reason they have no hope of returning to their homeland. Explaining moreover what they had said, they add: "And our hope is lost." This is a repetition of the former [statement] in clearer words.
Next follows: "And we are cut off." Understand: from our homeland. As if they were to say: Just as it cannot happen that a branch completely cut off from a tree can afterwards be joined and grafted, so it cannot happen that we, separated from Judea, can return to it. And just as a tree is destitute of its hope when its roots are plucked up, so since we are rooted out from our former dignity, how shall we ever be able to be restored to it?
Thus Job said: "I perish, and like a tree plucked up, He has taken away my hope" (Job 19:10). He did not despair of the salvation of his soul and of divine aid, but so great was his calamity that many arrive at that point of impiety regarding the possibility of returning to former prosperity, that they admit no remedy, no medicine for the soul, for obtaining pardon for their crimes when they are near to bodily death.
What in life seems light and easy, the devil persuades; in death, he persuades it is most grave and altogether inexpiable. Just as the trunk of a tree floating in the whirlpool of a river is easily drawn by any man with a hooked instrument to the shore from the midst of the waters, but once it touches land, four men cannot move it, so sin, while man lives, seems so light that he easily admits it; but at the time of death, when man is now near to the earth, then it appears so heavy that the sinner, not valuing able to bear so great a burden, thinks of the magnitude of such weight and to such thought applies desperation entirely.
By a double temptation the devil attacks man: one is of facility in admission, the other of difficulty in desperation. Our life is a river, death is the shore, the trunk of a tree is sin. As long as the sinner fixes hope in God, there is no despairing of his salvation; but if he himself despairs entirely of divine mercy, he is incurable. Such was he of whom the Prophet Micheas said: "Over this I will lament and wail, because her plague is desperate" (Micah 1:8).
Ezek 37:12–13: "Therefore prophesy…"
"Therefore prophesy and say to them: Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will open your graves and bring you up from your sepulchres, O My people…"
He calls prisons of Chaldea and places where the sons of Israel were detained captives "tombs and sepulchres"; for civil death is said. The sense is: I will liberate from Babylonian servitude; I will snatch from the captivity of sin. There is no servitude like serving sins. "He who commits sin," says the Lord, "is a servant of sin" (John 8:34). Conversely, there is no greater liberty than to serve God. To serve God is to reign. "He who is led by the Spirit is free." For as St. Paul says in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians: "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty" (2 Corinthians 3:17). For this reason, in the Epistle to the Galatians: "We are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free… with the freedom wherewith Christ has made us free" (Galatians 4:31; 5:1).
This is the cause why the Gospel of Christ is called the law of perfect liberty. Thus says the Apostle James: "But he who has looked into the perfect law of liberty and has continued therein… this man shall be blessed in his deed" (James 1:25). This Apostle, whose mind is purged, penetrates the Gospel not only with exterior but interior eyes, is carried to its Author, recognizes His charity toward himself, and is inflamed with his love toward Him; this man is free and, relying on the spirit of liberty, cries out: "Abba, Father."
But heretics intemperately abuse this liberty. They preach liberty of the flesh, when Christian liberty is spiritual. They grow with Mahometan and Epicurean liberty; approaching it, their priests, having repudiated the vow of chastity under the title of marriage, gorge themselves in concubinage and sacrilege. They call marriages those things which are most impure and obstinate whoredoms, and they say that to be Christian is to obey no one but to be led by pleasure.
O blind breasts, darker than Cimmerian darkness! Hear St. Peter, prince of the Apostles, refuting your opinion in this way in his First Epistle: "Be subject to every human creature for God's sake, whether to the king as excelling, or to governors as sent by Him for the punishment of evildoers and for the praise of the good… as free, and not as making liberty a covering for malice, but as the servants of God" (1 Peter 2:13–16).
Thus speaks the prince of the Apostles. What could be said more clearly? What could condemn your heresy more openly, O unhappy Lutherans? He takes away your abuse which you pretend under the pretext of Christian liberty. Christians are free from the yoke of the old law, from sins, from the tyranny of the devil, from the servitude of Babylon. They ought not to serve these if they wish to use liberty. But magistrates must be obeyed without contempt of the Gospel, and what are Caesar's must be rendered to Caesar, what are God's to God.
The flesh must be crucified with its vices and concupiscences; proper will must be denied; and the proper cross must be borne, so that thus, freed from sin, following Jesus Christ, we may obtain eternal life. This is Christian liberty, not that in which heretics glory, which is for them a covering of their crimes and a vain excuse of impious wickedness.
Blind men call it liberty to flow away in allurements and shameful pleasures, to overturn temples dedicated to God and His saints from the beginning of the Church until our memory, to snatch away sacraments instituted by Christ, to disturb the order of the Church, to supplant the discipline of the ancient Fathers, to tear up the authority of antiquity, to extinguish religion, piety, fear, honesty, modesty, and virtue, and finally to take away and utterly delete them from the midst. This is their liberty which the impious Lutherans preach, which repugns diametrically to the Christian liberty which God promised in this place in Ezekiel.
It is to be noted in this place that all the impious are buried in the tombs of crimes. But God can lead them away from sins and impart His grace to them. For He Himself says: "Behold, I will open your graves and bring you up from your sepulchres." He who led Lazarus, stinking, from the sepulchre and recalled him to life, will be able, if He wills, to convert the impious and lead him to Himself.
But attend: In Matthew, the Lord compares impious men to "whited sepulchres… full of bones of the dead" (Matthew 23:27); here, however, He says He is about to take them out of the sepulchres. Since therefore the impious are sepulchres, and God says He is about to lead them out of sepulchres, do you not see Him saying that He is about to lead impious men out from themselves? God wishes to say: I will liberate you from yourselves.
"Would that God might snatch me from myself!" "Snatch me from myself, O holy Christ; snatch me from my intimate enemies who are my appetites, my own proper will, my vain desires. Liberate me from my fiercest enemy, that is, from myself; lead me out from the tomb of myself, so that liberated from myself I may flee to Yourself."
"I lie in myself as if in a sepulchre; I await that sweetest voice of Yours and fullest of mercy: 'Hector, come forth!'" Wherever I am, I have my enemy with me; wherever I go, I carry him with me, namely my body, which it is not permitted me to kill. But I cry out with the Apostle: "Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" (Romans 7:24).
The Apostle speaks of the body not insofar as it is the seat and natural organ of the soul, but insofar as it is subject to corruption; for "the body which is corrupted weighs down the soul" (Wisdom 9:15). That Egyptian Hermes Trismegistus, whose erudition antiquity admired, speaking in the seventh [book] of the Poemander concerning the body, which he calls the garment of the soul, committed these words to letters:
"In the first place, it is necessary to put off the garment which you wear around you, the induement of ignorance, the foundation of pravity, the bond of corruption, the opaque veil, living death, sensible corpse, movable sepulchre, domestic thief, who while he flatters hates, while he hates envies. Such is the shadow-covering enemy with which you are clothed. It drags you down to itself, lest perhaps beholding the beauty of truth and the neighboring good you hate this pravity, lest you perceive these snares which it assiduously machinates against you."
Thus he. See what names that Egyptian imposes on the body, whose admirable doctrine all the ancients extolled with great praises. Observe how openly he calls the body a sepulchre. Hence I reckon it came to pass that the Greeks call the body soma, but a sepulchre sema, hinting that our body is a sepulchre (soma as if sema), because the soul is in the body as if buried.
But since man is called "flesh," and the body by synecdoche is taken as a part for the whole, man himself is called a sepulchre. From this it is concluded that God promised in this place of Ezekiel that He would snatch us from ourselves when He says: "I will bring you out of your sepulchres."
Ezek 37:14: "And I will make you rest upon your own land…"
"And I will make you rest upon your own land": You who now labor in a foreign land, [He promises] tranquility and peace in Zion. God promises that peace to His Church, of which He said afterwards: "Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives, do I give to you" (John 14:27).
God promises prosperity and quiet to just men, which He imparts to them. And although He sometimes exercises them with bitter calamities, nevertheless He does not wish to destroy them but to illustrate them. Just as gold cast into water does not lose its color nor its price, [but] when put into fire is rendered purer and more splendid, so the just and wise man in the water of prosperity does not lose virtue, but in the fire of calamity is rendered more illustrious and excellent; for he has a similarity with gold.
But the impious is similar to clay, which in water is dissolved, in fire is hardened. For in second things and those flowing according to will, he is led by pleasures and allurements and is versed in errors; but when adversities blow upon him, seeing himself oppressed, he hardens, left from all tolerance, he obstinates himself in crimes.
"And you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken…": When you shall see those things which I say fulfilled, then you shall know that those things are true which I now promise to you through Ezekiel.
CONTINUE
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