7. Let us see whether Christ
tasted the words of the aforesaid Canaanite in his response, or whether he was
exasperated at the foolishness of the supplicant: ‘O woman, great is thy faith:
be it unto thee even as thou wilt.’ If that faith is truly great, what does not
agree with it will not be correct. It was quite a different answer that he gave
his mother when he had been invited to a wedding celebration along with his
disciples, and the wine ran out, and he was asked to perform a miracle. To her
he said: ‘Woman, what has this concern of yours to do with me? Mine hour is not
yet come.’ It is as if he were to say, ‘why do you think that I am merely what
you gave birth to?’ If you think that all I consist of is flesh, then I cannot
carry out what you are asking. This exalted [favour] that you ask of me, I
inherited from my Father. I did not derive it from my mother. Do you teach a
body that was formed in you what is owed to infirmity, yet at the same time
enjoin acts of power? You do well to think that I can do what you want, if you
understand that, just as you are the mother of my body, you are also the mother
of your Creator. For if you would have it that you gave birth to a mere human
being, ‘Mine hour is not yet come.’
8. None can be thought such a
fool as to apply his phrase, ‘Mine hour is not yet come’, as if he were a
pagan, to astral fatalism. To understand the mystery of that hour, it is right
to look for a means of drawing a distinction rather than a [fixed] decree. Since
the very condition of our mortality itself is not bound to it (sc. Any decree),
but every necessity of our state is the will of him who governs us eternally,
how much the more unwilling to entangle himself in any fixed decrees of fate is
Christ, who has the power of laying down his life and of gaining it back. But
when the time arrives to undergo execution, both the divine traits, which came
from the Father, and the fleshly ones, which the womb brought forth, will appear.
Therefore, since the Lord himself here is carrying out a miraculously divine
action has not rejected his mother, but taught her in her ignorance, let us see
what he discussed with his disciples in a more lengthy treatment. (Avitus of
Vienne, Contra Eutychianam haeresim Book 2, in Avitus of Vienne:
Letters and Selected Prose [trans. Danuta Shanzer and Ian Wood; Translated
Texts for Historians; Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2002], 113-14)
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