Basil the Great, Letter 260
The words of Simeon to Mary
possess no subtlety nor depth. For ‘Simeon blessed them, and said to Mary his
mother, “Behold, this child is destined for the fall and for the rise of many
in Israel, and for a sign that shall be contradicted. And thy own soul a sword
shall pierce, that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.” ’ Here I
marvel at this—how it can be that, passing by the preceding words as clear, you
have inquired into this one: ‘and thy own soul a sword shall pierce.’ Yet,
there does not seem to me less difficulty in how the same one is destined ‘for
the fall and for the rise,’ and what ‘the sign that shall be contradicted’ is
than in the third, how ‘the sword shall pierce the soul of Mary.’
I think, therefore, that the Lord
is ‘for the fall and for the rise,’ not because some fall and others rise, but
because our lower nature falls and our better nature rises. The manifestation
of the Lord is destructive of the carnal passions, but stimulative of the
spiritual qualities. As when Paul says: ‘When I am weak, then I am strong,’ the
same man is both weak and strong, but he is weak in the flesh and he is strong
in the spirit. So, also, the Lord does not provide occasions to some of falling
and to others of rising. Those who fall, fall down from the state in which they
once were. Yet, it is evident that the faithless man never stands, but is
always trailing on the ground with the serpent which he follows. He does not
have any place, therefore, whence he may fall, because he has been previously
cast down by his infidelity. So, then, the first benefit is for him who stands
in sin to fall and die, then to live in justice and rise again, since faith in
Christ bestows both upon us. Let the lower nature fall, in order that the
better may seize the opportunity for its resurrection. If fornication does not
fall, chastity does not rise; if the irrational is not crushed, the rational in
us will not blossom. In this sense, then, He is ‘for the fall and for the rise
of many.’ (Basil of Caesarea, Letters (186-368) [trans. Agnes
Clare Way; The Fathers of the Church 28; Washington, D.C.: The Catholic
University of America Press, 1955], 229-30)
