{"author":null,"canonical_references":[],"database_sha256":"8cfbe7284c6936871d57c02dc6aa63ebbdfd4722422d539dd9f716e46e91112e","date_end":null,"date_start":null,"edition_year":null,"id":"sermonindex-ecf-6815","native_reference":{"book_number":350,"chapter_from":13,"chapter_to":13,"system":"MyBible module coordinates (mapping unverified)","verse_from":14,"verse_to":14},"public_import_allowed":false,"record_kind":"verse-keyed-module-record","review_required":["English edition and exact text","author/work attribution","dating","verse mapping and citation kind","reuse and attribution","split author quotations and deduplicate"],"review_status":"unreviewed","source_html":"<p><b>Ambrose of Milan</b>: No one could know Wisdom; for no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son, and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him. Therefore, He Himself revealed to John with whom Wisdom was; and for this reason, he said, not as his own, but what Wisdom had infused in him: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. Wisdom does not know destruction, it does not know wickedness. For destruction could not hold it, who said: Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?<br/><i>— The Prayer of Job and David 1:9.31</i></p><p><b>Augustine of Hippo</b>: What is it the chaste person would like? That no lust at all should stir in the members against chastity. [The chaste person] wants peace but hasn't yet got it. I mean, when we get to the stage where no lusts at all rise up to be opposed, there won't be any more enemy for us to wrestle with; nor is there in that state any expectation of victory, because the triumph is being celebrated over the enemy already conquered. Listen to the apostle telling you about that victory: \"The perishable must put on imperishability, and the mortal put on immortality; then will come about the saying that is written: 'Death has been swallowed up in victory.' \" Now listen to the song of triumph: \"Where, O death, is your striving? Where, O death, is your sting?\" You have stabbed, you have wounded, you have knocked down; but the one who made me was wounded for me. O death, death! The one who made me was wounded for me, and by his death he conquered you. And that's when those who triumph over you are going to say, \"Where, O death, is your striving? Where, O death, is your sting?\"<br/><i>— SERMON 128</i></p><p><b>Braulio of Zaragoza</b>: In spite of these words, we are so deeply affected that we fall into tears and the longing of desire crushes the beliefs of the mind. How miserable is the human lot! How vain is all our life without Christ! O death, that separates those who were joined, cruel and harsh in forcing apart those who were tied by friendship! Now, now your strength is destroyed. Now is that wicked yoke of yours broken by him who sternly threatened you in the words of Hosea: \"O death, I will be your bite!\" So let us with the apostle voice our taunt: \"O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?\" He who conquered you has redeemed us—he who betrayed his beloved soul into the hands of the wicked, that those who were once wicked he might make his beloved.<br/><i>— LETTER 19</i></p><p><b>Cosmas Indicopleustes</b>: Yet again the same prophet says: From the power of the grave will I ransom them. Where is thy victory, O death! Where is thy sting, O grave!—a passage which the Apostle has used concerning the resurrection.<br/><i>— The Christian Topography, Book 5</i></p><p><b>Gregory of Nazianzus</b>: But that brazen serpent was hung up as a remedy for the biting serpents, not as a type of him that suffered for us but as a contrast. And [the brazen serpent] saved those that looked upon it, not because they believed it to live but because it was killed, and killed with it were the powers that were subject to it, being destroyed as it deserved. And what is the fitting epitaph for it from us? \"O death, where is your sting? O grave, where is your victory?\" You are overthrown by the cross; you are slain by him who is the giver of life; you are without breath, dead, without motion, even though you keep the form of a serpent lifted up on a pole.<br/><i>— ON HOLY EASTER, ORATION 45:22</i></p><p><b>Gregory the Dialogist</b>: From this solemnity indeed the example of resurrection was given to us, the hope of the heavenly homeland was opened, and the glory of the supernal kingdom was made something we might already anticipate. Through this, the elect, who although they were in the bosom of tranquility, were nevertheless held in the confines of hell, were led back to the delights of paradise. What the Lord said before His passion, He fulfilled in His resurrection: \"If I am lifted up from the earth,\" He said, \"I will draw all things to myself.\" For He drew all things, He who left none of His elect in the underworld. He took away all things—that is, all the elect. For He did not restore to pardon by rising again any unbelievers or those consigned to eternal punishments for their crimes; but He snatched from the confines of hell those whom He recognized as His own in faith and in deeds. Whence rightly also He says through Hosea: \"I will be your death, O death; I will be your sting, O hell.\" For what we kill, we cause to exist no more entirely. But from what we bite, we take away a part and leave a part behind. Therefore, because in His elect He utterly killed death, He became the death of death. But because He took away a part from hell and left a part behind, He did not utterly kill but bit hell. Therefore He says: \"I will be your death, O death.\" As if He were saying openly: Because in my elect I utterly destroy you, I will be your death; I will be your sting, O hell, because when they have been taken away, I pierce you in part.<br/><i>— Forty Gospel Homilies, Homily 22</i></p><p><b>Gregory the Dialogist</b>: Whence rightly also He says through Hosea: \"I will be your death, O death; I will be your sting, O hell.\" For what we kill, we cause to exist no more entirely. But from what we bite, we take away a part and leave a part behind. Therefore, because in His elect He utterly killed death, He became the death of death. But because He took away a part from hell and left a part behind, He did not utterly kill but bit hell. Therefore He says: \"I will be your death, O death.\" As if He were saying openly: Because in my elect I utterly destroy you, I will be your death; I will be your sting, O hell, because when they have been taken away, I pierce you in part. What then is this solemnity which destroyed the confines of hell and opened to us the gates of the heavenly kingdom?<br/><i>— Forty Gospel Homilies, Homily 22</i></p><p><b>Jerome</b>: I will free them from the hand of death; I will redeem them from death. O death, I will be your death; O underworld, I will be your sting. Comfort is hidden from my eyes because He will Himself divide among brothers. According to both the understanding of Ephraim, that is, the ten tribes, and the heretics, who will not be able to bear the pain of their sons' contrition, when pains come upon them like those of a woman in labor, the Lord promises to liberate them from the hand of death and to redeem them from death. However, the hand of death refers to the works by which it kills, according to that which is written: \"Death and life are in the power of the tongue\" (Prov. XVIII, 21). But the Lord freed all, and redeemed in the passion of the cross and the shedding of His blood: when His soul descended into hell, and His flesh did not see corruption, and even to death and hell He spoke: \"I will be thy death, O death.\" Therefore, I died, so that by my death thou might die. \"I will be thy biting, O hell,\" who devourest everyone in thy jaws. And seeing the harsh necessity of death, and that there is no man who lives and does not see death (Psalm LXXXVIII), the most merciful Father remembers the ancient sentence: that in Adam we all die (1 Corinthians XV). Having understood his own weakness and the frailty of human flesh, the prophet said: 'Consolation,' he said, 'is hidden from my eyes,' with the meaning: I cannot console myself, whatever I conceive in my mind, my pain cannot be mitigated, seeing ('Al.' seeing) the dearest names separated by death: For hell ('Al.' he said) itself divides brothers. Therefore, whatever separates brothers should be called hell: especially the harlot woman, who calls the foolish man to her, saying in the wealth of her wisdom: Touch willingly hidden breads and drink the sweetness of stolen waters; and the foolish man does not know that those who are of the earth die with her, and fall into the depths of hell. For whatever is not allowed, is desired more, and what is sweet through rarity, turns bitter through frequent indulgence. And honey drips from the lips of a harlot who, for a time, fattens up the throat of the fool; but in the end, it is found more bitter than gall, and sharper than a double-edged sword. Whoever is an earthborn and does not come from heaven, falls into their embraces; they are bound with the chains of their couches, and their feet walk towards foolishness, leading those who use them to death and to hell. Between death and the underworld, there is this difference: death is when the soul is separated from the body; the underworld is the place where the souls are either held in cold storage or punished, depending on the quality of their merits. We have said this to show that death does what a harlot does. For death divides brothers, just as a woman does. In the case of brothers, understand that any brotherly love is divided: a mother is divided from her daughter, and a father from his son, and a brother from his brother. But what is death, and what is hell, the psalmist shows, saying: \"There is no one in death who remembers you: in hell, who will confess you\" (Ps. VI, 6)? And in another place: \"Let death come upon them, and let them go down alive into hell\" (Ps. LIV, 16). Because we have translated: \"I will be your death, O death: I will be your bite, O hell,\" the LXX (Septuagint) translated: \"Where is your cause, O death? Where is your stimulus, O hell?\" For which reason the Apostle placed: \"Death has been swallowed up in\" \"contention; where is your contentio, death? Where is your sting, O death\" (1 Co. XV, 54 et seqq)? And explaining the power of the testimony, he said: \"But the sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law; but thanks be to God, who has given us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.\" Therefore, what he interpreted as the resurrection of the Lord, we cannot nor dare interpret differently. Death, hell, and the devil may be understood, who was killed by the death of Christ, about whom Isaiah also speaks: \"Death has been swallowed up by victory\" (Isaiah 25:8, LXX translation). And afterwards it follows: \"The Lord hath taken away every tear from every face.\" Now, however, some understand that the two brothers who were separated by death, according to the history of that time, are Israel and Judah, so that what was then prefigured partly may now be felt in its entirety, and that with every human race Israel and Judah must be liberated and redeemed. In the place where the LXX have translated, \"Where is thy cause?\" and we have said, \"Thy death shall be,\" Symmachus has interpreted, \"Thy plague will be,\" the fifth edition and Aquila: \"Where are thy words?\" which is written in Hebrew Dabarach: reading Dabar, which means \"word,\" for Deber, which is interpreted as \"death;\" according to what we read in Isaiah: \"The Lord hath sent death upon Jacob, and it is come into Israel\" (Isaiah 9), that is, \"deber,\" for which we have interpreted: \"The Lord sent the Word into Jacob, and it came into Israel,\" that is, \"dabar.\" Also for the sting which we translated as \"bite,\" Symmachus translated ἀπάντημα, that is, \"encounter:\" Theodotion and the fifth edition have interpreted as \"plague, and conclusion.\"<br/><i>— Commentary on Hosea 13:14</i></p><p><b>Paulus Orosius</b>: Thus, if the glory of incorruptibility has been hidden from all people in this time, how do you, in this very same age, boast that you are able to be clothed with that very same incorruptibility? For just as sinking into sin has become for humans the beginning of corruption, so not having sin will be the beginning of incorruption. Who, therefore, concealed this prior to the judgment of God or removed it from the bosom of Christ and handed it over to you? Or do you perhaps think that a person would not merit this in the future from the hand of the Lord? That most distinguished man, Paul, teaches this and says, \"But when this mortal thing has put on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying which is written, 'Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death is your sting?' Now the sting of death is sin.\" Through this the apostle shows that by no means can anyone so scoff at death and sin, until immortality follows mortality, and incorruption, corruption, and when, with the destruction of weakness, perfect virtue succeeds it; when there will not be male and female, but when all will be similar to the angels of God.<br/><i>— DEFENSE AGAINST THE PELAGIANS 32</i></p>","source_html_sha256":"9af88160c32c46fb016d0a74c8f8908120e2784220affadda530c53e52759934","source_module":"ECF","source_row_id":6815,"source_url":"https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/ecf/","text_sha256":"db9770ead728a5f8f469f2172db185657d379307c125f34562eec1c9cd83f80e","translator":null,"work":null}