Tractates on the Gospel of John (continued)
TRACTATE 9
On John 2.1 — ii
AY THE Lord, our God, be present that he may grant to us to deliver what we have promised. For yesterday, if you remember, my holy people, when the shortness of time prevented us from completing the sermon that was begun, we put it off until today, so that those things which in this event of the gospel reading were put mystically in profound mysteries might, with his help, be made clear. And so there is no need to delay any longer in making God's miracle manifest. For it is God himself who through all of creation every day performs miracles which have lost their value for men, not from their easiness but from their regularity.'
(2) But those rare ones which were performed by the same Lord, that is, by the Word made flesh for us, have produced greater astonishment in men, not because they were greater than those which he does daily in creation but because those which happen daily are accomplished, as it were, in the course of nature while those others seem to have been displayed to men's eyes by the action of a power immediately present, as it were. We have said,^ as you remember, one dead man rose again; men were dumbfounded, while no one is amazed that those who did not exist before are born everyday. So too, who is not amazed that water was turned into wine, although God does this every year apropos of vines? But because all the things which the Lord Jesus did are not only valuable for arousing our hearts by miracles, but also for instructing [our hearts] with a knowledge of the faith, we must thoroughly in-
1. Cf. Tractate 8.1. 2. Ibid.