Annotatio CCXLIII
”Taking of my garments, thou hast made to thyself high places.” — Ezekiel 16:16
Origen, in homily 7 on Ezekiel, when he was expounding this particle, cursorily proceeded to the explanation of Christ’s sentence from Matthew:1 “Upon the chair of Moses have sat the Scribes and Pharisees: all things whatsoever they say to you, hear and do; but according to their works do not [do]: for they say, and do not. This discourse is about me, who teach good things and do the contrary, and am a seat upon the chair of Moses, as a scribe and Pharisee. The precept is to thee, O people: if thou shalt not have ground of accusation — [namely] the worst doctrine, foreign to the dogmas of the Church — but shalt behold my culpable life and sins, [thou art bidden] not to order thy life according to [me] who speak, but to do those things which I shall speak: let us imitate no one; and if we wish to imitate anyone, Christ is set before us for imitation.”
This passage, as is gathered from the Collectanea of Hermann, the heretics twist against Catholics — especially against monks, who imitate Basil, Benedict, Dominic, Francis, and the other founders of the monastic life — as if it were not enough to imitate the one Christ, whom Paul sets before us as the sole exemplar of imitation, saying: “Be ye imitators of Christ.”2 To whom it must be responded: We, when we imitate the saints, imitate in the saints no other than Christ, dwelling and living in the saints — Paul saying, “I live, now not I; but Christ liveth in me.”3 Nor do we imitate the saints in any other way than [in imitating] him whom Paul — in whom Christ was speaking — set before us, saying, “Be ye imitators of me, as I also [am] of Christ”4 — that is, in so far as the saints themselves imitate Christ. To this sense, therefore, are the proposed words of Origen brought forth.