Opening: silence preferred, yet the feast of the martyrs compels speech

Grant your blessing, Master. I wanted to keep quiet and not make public a rustic tongue. For silence is a great thing when speech is cheap; and stillness is wonderful when lack of training is present; and he is a high philosopher who covers ignorance by silence. I too preferred to do this, knowing the weakness of my own tongue. But the sight of what is before us draws me to speak.

Since, then, the festival is bright and the assembly continuous, and our gathering is fervent in faith, I will turn boldly to the beginning of the discourse — especially as the Father is praying, the Church contending alongside, and the holy martyrs strengthening this weakness for the task.

For these have also persuaded old men, with much sweat, to finish a long journey, and have forced stumbling steps to be steadied by the staff of the Word. They have urged the female sex to travel with young men. And the martyrs have brought here even the infant age that still creeps — leaping against death, laughing at swords, snatching away tyrannical rage, seizing death that brokers immortality, claiming the victory in their own fall, springing through the body toward heaven. Scattering their members so that they may bind their souls tight; breaking the bars of life so that they may open the keys of the heavens.

Let the one who does not believe that death has been dissolved, that Hades has been trampled, that its bonds have been torn apart, that the tyrant has been bound — look at martyrs tumbling against death and celebrating the victory of Christ. O the wonder! From the time Christ despoiled Hades, people have danced upon death. Where, O death, is your sting? Where, O Hades, is your victory? (1 Corinthians 15:55). Hades has been despoiled, and the devil; he has been stripped of his ancient panoply; and he has been cast out of his own power.