For on this account the treasure of the Gnosis Of God is revealed to them who search the Divine...

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For on this account the treasure of the Gnosis Of God is revealed to them who search the Divine Oracles. That treasure of the Inspired Scriptures The Paraclete has unfolded to us this day. And let the tongue of prophecy and the doctrine of apostles be the treasure of Wisdom to us; for without the Law and the Prophets, or the Evangelists and the Apostles, it is not possible to have the certain hope of Salvation. For by the tongue of the holy Prophets and Apostles our Lord Speaks, and God takes pleasure in the words of the saints; not that He requires the spoken address, but that He Delights in the good disposition; not that He receives any profit from men, but that He finds a restful satisfaction in the rightly-affected soul of the righteous. For it is not that Christ is magnified by what we say; but as we receive benefits from Him, we proclaim with grateful mind His Beneficence to us; not that we can attain to what is worthy therein, but that we give the meet return to the best of our ability. And when the Gospels or the Epistles, therefore, are read, let not your attention centre on the book or on the reader, but on The God Who Speaks to you from heaven. For the book is but that which is seen, while Christ Is The Divine Subject spoken of. It brings us then the glad tidings of that economy of The Saviour, which is worthy of all praise, to wit, that, though He was God, He Became Man through kindness toward man, and did not lay aside, indeed, The Dignity which was His from all Eternity, but Assumed the economy that should work Salvation. It brings us the glad tidings of that economy of The Saviour worthy of all praise, to wit, that He Sojourned with us as a physician for the sick, who did not heal them with potions, but restored them by the inclination of His Philanthropy.

It brings us the glad tidings of this economy of The Saviour altogether to be praised, to wit, that to them who had wandered astray the way of salvation was shown, and that to the despairing the Grace of salvation was made known, which blesses all in different modes; searching after the erring, enlightening the blinded, giving life to the dead, setting free the slaves, redeeming the captives, and becoming all things to all of us in order to be The True Way Of Salvation to us (Cf. 1 Corinthians 9:22): and all this He does, not by reason of our goodwill toward Him, but in virtue of a benignity that is proper to our Benefactor Himself. For The Saviour did all, not in order that He might acquire virtue Himself, but that He might put us in possession of Eternal Life. He made man, indeed, after the image of God, and appointed him to live in a paradise of pleasure. But the man being deceived by the Devil, and having become a transgressor of the divine commandment, was made subject to the doom of death. Whence, also, those born of him were involved in their father's liability in virtue of their succession, and had the reckoning of condemnation required of them. "For death reigned from Adam to Moses." (Romans 5:14) But The Lord, in His Benignity toward man, when He saw the creature He Himself had formed now held by the power of death, did not turn away finally from him whom He had made in His Own Icon, but Visited him in each generation, and forsook him not; and Manifesting Himself first of all among the patriarchs, and then proclaiming Himself in the Law, and Presenting the likeness of Himself in the prophets, He Presignified the economy of salvation. When, moreover, the fulness of the times came for His Glorious Appearing, He Sent beforehand the archangel Gabriel to bear the glad tidings to the Virgin Mary. And he came down from the ineffable powers above to the holy Virgin, and addressed her first of all with the salutation, "Hail, thou that art highly favoured." And when this word, "Hail, thou that art highly favoured," reached her, in the very moment of her hearing it, The Holy Spirit entered into the undefiled temple of the Virgin, and her mind and her members were sanctified together.