Prudentius — Commentary on Scripture

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

Proverbs 8:27-28

This Wisdom uttered made the sky,
The sky and light and all besides;
All by the Word’s almighty power
Were fashioned, for the Word was God.

HYMNS FOR EVERY DAY 11

Psalms 8:6

From his Providence, humanity has received
All that he grasps with imperious hand:
All that the sky and the earth and the sea
Yields from the air and the waves and the fields,
This he subjects to me, me to himself.

HYMNS FOR EVERY DAY 3:36-40

Psalms 24:7

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.
You have beheld my saving temple rise
On high, surrounded by an angel throng.
The everlasting gates uphold its roof;
Through lofty towers the glorious stairs arise,
And at the top appears a shining path.

THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 518-36

Psalms 44:1

The majesty that with the Father dwelled,
His spirit and thought, the way of his designs,
Which made not by his hand or spoken word,
Breathed from the Father’s heart, declared his will.

THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 90-93

Psalms 119:105-108

Behold a stone is set for us, a stumbling block,
Against which vanity may strike,
A sign unto the faithful, scandal to the lax,
The one it fells, the other guides.
The blind one feels his way with slow uncertain step
And runs into what’er he meets.
The lamp of faith alone must shine before our feet,
That footsteps may unswerving be.
The foe assails and carries off the wanderers
Who in the darkness go astray,
A demon who devours the wheat speeds on the way
For pilgrims passing to and fro,
A thief who tampers with the fertile fields of Christ
By sowing in them barren oats.
A demon who devours the wheat spread on the way
For pilgrims passing to and fro,
A thief who tampers with the fertile fields of Christ
By sowing in them barren oats.

THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 33-46

Psalms 135:7

The sky above, the earth and ocean’s mightydepths,
The orbs presiding over day and over night,
The winds and tempests, lightnings, showers of rain and clouds,
The polar stars, the star of evening, heat and snow,
The fountains, hoarfrosts, precious veins of ore and streams,
One in their might one both the Father and the Son,
And that one splendor generated by one light
With all the Godhead’s plenitude of brightness shone.
In God one undivided being operates,
And by one power was created all that is,
The rugged cliffs and level plains and mountain dells,
Wild beasts, the fowl of air and reptiles, all that swim,
The beasts of burden, cattle, oxen, mammoth brutes,
The flowers and shrubs, the vines, the herbs and woodland groves,
All plants that shed their fragrance, plants that food supply.

BOOK OF THE MARTYRS’ CROWNS 10:325-35

Psalms 148:1-2

Sing his praises heights of heaven,
all you angels sing his praise,
Let the mighty hosts of heaven sing in
joyous praise of God;
Let no tongue of humanity be silent,
let all voices join the hymn.

HYMNS FOR EVERY DAY 22-24

Romans 5:12

Such was the soul’s first state. Created pure
Through sordid union with the flesh it fell
Into iniquity; stained by Adam’s sin,
It tainted all the race from him derived,
And infant souls inherit at their birth
The first man’s sin; no one is sinless born.

THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST, LINES 909-15