Prudentius — Commentary on Scripture

Mark 5:3

Then a man bereft of reason,
dwelling in sepulchral caves,
Bound with cruel and grinding fetters and
with raging frenzy torn,
Rushes forth and kneels in worship, as the
saving Christ draws near.

HYMN 9

Mark 5:13

Driven forth, the wily demons, legion named that evil scourge,
Seize upon the sordid foulness of a herd of filthy swine
And into the muddy waters plunge themselves with maddened beasts.

HYMN 9

Mark 5:20

Behold, a legion hurls headlong the swine
Of Gerasenes, and once enchained in tombs,
It loudly grunts with pain. From lips possessed
It had cried out: “O Jesus, Son of God,
Offspring of David’s royal line, we know
Who you are and why you have come, what power
Expels us, at your coming filled with dread.”
Has not this voice, Judea, reached your ears?
True, but it has not pierced your darkened mind
And, driven back, has from the threshold fled.
Now sets the evening sun, where he who beholds
The rosy dawn beholds the Lord’s advent.
The fervent gospel word
Has thawed the Scythian frosts and Hyrcanian snows,
So that Rhodopeian Hebrus, freed from ice,
Flows from Caucasian cliffs, a gentler stream.

A HYMN ON THE TRINITY

Mark 5:34

Members filled with leprous ulcers,
flesh corrupted and decayed,
“Go and wash them, I command you”;
what he ordered then is done;
Wounds are healed by pious cleansing,
swollen flesh grows smooth again.
Now on eyes, by lifelong darkness,
shrouded from the light of day
Thou dost spread a clay of healing, made
with nectar from thy lips;
Soon the blinded orbs are opened and
rejoice in late-found sight.
Thou dost chide the angry tempest
and the savage hurricane,
Which upheave the tossing billows
and beset the fragile boat;
At thy bidding winds are subject,
and the rolling waves are stilled.
Then a woman, weak and timid, touched
his sacred garment’s hem:
Instant was the blessed healing, and
the pallor left her cheek,
As the hemorrhage she had suffered
through so many years was stopped.
Lazarus for four days buried, hidden in
the sunless tomb,
He restores to life and vigor, giving
power to breathe again,
And the soul returning, enters flesh
now crumbling to decay.

HYMN 9

Mark 6:8

To wish for nothing more than need demands
Is rest supreme, with simple food and dress
To feed and clothe our bodies and to seek
No more than is prescribed by nature’s wants.
When going on a journey, take no purse,
Nor of a second tunic think, and be
Not anxious for the morrow, lest for food
The belly lack. Our daily bread returns
With every sun. Does any bird take thought
Of tomorrow, certain to be fed by God?

THE SPIRITUAL COMBAT

Mark 6:38

Five loaves and fishes two he orders placed
As food before the people thronging round
Their master, by their hunger undeterred,
Who mindful not of food forgot their towns,
Their forts, their markets, hamlets, trading-posts
And cities, glad to feed upon his words.
The festive gathering swarms upon the plain;
By hundreds they recline in friendly bands,
And round the countless boards they range themselves
To dine on two small fish and scanty crusts
He multiplies—know now that he is God!

A HYMN ON THE TRINITY

Mark 6:41

Thou, our bread, our true refreshment,
never failing sweetness art;
He can nevermore know hunger,
who is at thy banquet fed,
Nourishing not our fleshly nature,
but imparting lasting life. …
Every sickness now surrenders,
every listlessness departs,
Tongues long bound by chains of silence
are unloosed and speak aright,
While the joyful paralytic
bears his pallet through the streets.

HYMNS 9

Mark 6:43

The banquet ended, plates still overflow,
And with the crumbs twelve baskets then they fill.
The stuffed boy strives with undigested fare,
The waiter groans beneath his heavy load.
Who can a great feast spread from stores so few?
Who but the maker of our frame and all
That nurtures it, who shaped the world from nought?
Almighty God without the aid of seed
Fashioned the earth, not as the sculptor works
To lift the block of bronze from metal fused.
All that now is was nought: that nothingness
Was into being brought and bidden grow.
Small was the first creation, but it grew
Till it became the mighty universe.
Therefore, when I behold that meager fare
Thus multiplied within the hands of Christ,
Can I doubt that the elemental forms
First made by him from nothing, by degrees
Have grown to that perfection we now see?
Lest fragments should be trodden on and lost,
When men had fed, or should become the spoil
Of wolves or foxes or of petty mice,
Twelve men were charged to heap in baskets full
The gifts of Christ to keep and spread afar.

A HYMN ON THE TRINITY

Mark 6:48

Simon, surnamed Peter,
Chief disciple of Christ the Lord,
On a day at the set of sun
When the evening sky grows red,
Unloosed his anchor’s hook,
And filled his sails with the swelling winds,
And made ready to cross the sea.
But night roused up a contrary gale
That stirred up the deeper waves
And buffeted the floundering boat.
Shouts of fishermen struck the sky,
With shrieks and despairing groans
Amid the creak of swaying ropes.
Nor did any have hope of escape
From shipwreck and a watery death,
When the oarsmen all wan with fear
Saw Christ himself not far away
Treading surely upon the surge,
Just as though on the barren shore
He walked over the solid ground.

AGAINST SYMMACHUS 2

Mark 6:50

Thus I by my loquacious tongue
From the heaven of silence am led
Into perils unknown and dark.
Not as Peter, disciple true,
Confident in his virtue and faith,
I am as one whose unnumbered sins
Have shipwrecked on the rolling seas.…
How easily can I be shipwrecked,
One untaught in seafaring arts,
Unless you, almighty Christ,
Stretch forth your hand with help divine.

AGAINST SYMMACHUS 2

Mark 6:51

O mighty is the power of God,
The power that all things did create,
That calmed the waters of the sea
When Christ upon its surface walked,
So that in treading on the waves,
He moved dry-shod across the deep,
Nor ever did he wet his soles
As light he skimmed the surging flood.

HYMN 5

Mark 7:36

Deafened ears, of sound unconscious,
every passage blocked and closed,
At the word of Christ responding,
all the portals open wide,
Hear with joy friendly voices and
the softly whispered speech.
Every sickness now surrenders,
every listlessness departs,
Tongues long bound by chains of silence
are unloosed and speak aright,
While the joyful paralytic
bears his pallet through the streets.

HYMNS 9

Mark 13:35

“Away,” he cries, “with dull repose,
The sleep of death and sinful sloth;
With hearts now sober, just and pure,
Keep watch, for I am very near.”

A HYMN FOR COCK-CROW

Mark 14:58

Do not the quarried stones of Solomon
Now lie in ruins, that temple built by hand?
Why so? The mortal hand of mason wrought
That short-lived work. It rightly lies in ruins,
Since every work of art returns to nought.
All that is made is doomed one day to fall.
Learn what our temple is, if you would know;
It is one that no artisan has built,
A structure not of riven fir or pine,
Nor reared with blocks of quarried marble fair.
Its massive weight no columns high support
Beneath the arches of a gilded vault.
By God’s Word it was formed, not by his voice,
But by the everlasting Word, the Word made flesh.
This temple is eternal, without end,
This you attacked with scourge and cross and gall.
This temple was destroyed by bitter pains.
Its form was fragile from the mother’s womb,
But when brief death the mother’s part dissolved,
The Father’s might restored it in three days.

THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST

Mark 14:58

Lo, the house of the wicked blasphemer,
Caiaphas, has fallen,
Where the sacred face of the Christ
was cruelly smitten.
This destruction will be the lot
of all reprobate sinners,
For their life will lie buried
in crumbling ruins forever.
In this house the Lord stood upright,
bound and tied to a pillar,
And submitted his back as a slave
bound and tied to a pillar,
Worthy of reverence, this pillar still
stands, supporting a temple,
And instructing us how to lead our lives.
free from all scourges

SCENES FROM SACRED HISTORY 40, 41

Mark 16:4

Neither the stone nor the bolts of the tomb
could hold Christ a captive;
Death lies conquered by him, he has
trampled on hell’s fiery chasm.
With him a throng of saints ascended to
heavenly regions,
And to many he showed himself, letting
them see and touch him.

SCENES FROM SACRED HISTORY 43, THE SEPULCHER OF CHRIST

Mark 16:19

Hail! Thou king of all the living;
Hail! Thou judge of all the dead,
At the right hand of thy Father,
Thou art throned in highest power,
And from thence just judge of sinners,
Thou shalt one day come again.

HYMN 9, A HYMN FOR EVERY HOUR