The Typology of Festivals and the Trumpet

The Spirit distinguishes each thing, and the forms of sensible appearance reveal the invisible disposition of the soul. Why do you mix the unmixed and carry together those things which are separated? There are other common festivals for them. One they call the Feast of Tabernacles, and another I hear is the remembrance of trumpets. But they celebrate the mysteries of Christians in ignorance, because the creation of the Tabernacle is the practical prophecy of this Church, which our Word established.

For this reason, they also adorn the Tabernacle with leaves and beautify the courts with flowers, as a type of how the new Church is to bring forth fruitfulness by the law. But the feast of the trumpets rouses the souls toward the preparation for the resurrection, as Paul says: 'For the dead shall also be sounded forth and shall arise' (1 Cor 15:52). And God our Savior also teaches in the Gospels, saying: 'And he will send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other' (Matt 24:31).

Hearing these words, they will perhaps use such a contradiction against us: that, remembering the ancient wonders and the blessings of God, they bring these thanksgivings forward in favor of Mount Sinai and the trumpet that sounded at the giving of the law. But the thoughtless will not know that even then the trumpet was taken as a type during the giving of the law.

Since he who receives the law for a rule of life and an orderly polity must demonstrate the punishment for disobedience, therefore God, sending the written commands of our life to men, immediately added also the voice of the trumpet, a symbol of the resurrection from the dead, so that the disciples of the commands, foreseeing the judgment through the resurrection, might guard the doctrines as safeguards of the divine legislation.

Do not fasting and the Feast of Tabernacles and the trumpets of our piety also constitute mysteries of our piety, once indicated in shadow, but reaching their outcome in the proper time, when the theophanies in the flesh of our Savior were completed; to whom belongs the glory and the honor and the worship, now and forever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.