Threshing-floor is Church; Christ bought her; oxen that thresh

having arrived, he stood thereafter, and death was abolished, and the destroyer drew together the hand terrible of old and destroying; for it is a house of the life according to nature—that is, of Christ. And we say the Church is a threshing-floor as from likeness and image, upon which like sheaves, or ears, those being sheared from the life from the world through the word of the holy harvesters are gathered—that is, of apostles and evangelists—so that they might also be brought together into the courts above, and as into a master’s storehouse, into the heavenly Jerusalem, might be brought in as some clean wheat, according to the putting-away of the more useless and superfluous things and thoughts together, which are understood as in a form of the chaff. And it has been said somewhere by Christ to the holy apostles: ‘Do you not say that there is a four-month, and the harvest comes? Behold I say to you: Lift up your eyes, and see the fields, that they are white toward harvest already. The one harvesting receives a wage, and gathers fruit unto eternal life.’ And again: ‘The harvest is much, but the workers few. Beg therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he cast out workers into his harvest.’ Naming, I think, the intelligible harvest the multitude of those about to believe, and saying holy harvesters are those having the divine word unto mind and tongue, which is living and clear, and sharper beyond every two-edged sword, and arriving as far as division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrows. And by the name of the threshing-floor the blessed Baptist also was making clear the Church, saying somewhere thus concerning Christ: ‘I baptize you with water, but the one stronger than I comes, of whom I am not sufficient to loose the strap of his sandals; he himself will baptize you in Holy Spirit and fire; whose winnowing-fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly clean his threshing-floor, and will gather his wheat into the storehouse, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.’ This intelligible threshing-floor therefore—I mean the Church—Christ bought for fifty shekels—that is, not light prices; for he has given himself for her, and has fixed in her the altar; and since he himself is the one performing the sacred rite (for he has become high priest), he himself also brought himself forward as the victim, as in a form and type of the threshing calf, and has become a whole-burnt-offering and a peace sacrifice. For the intervening has been loosed in Christ, and we who of old were standing apart and marked off through the sin enter in together through him and in him to God and Father, having dissolved that ancient enmity. For he himself is our peace, according to the Scriptures.

Palladius: Will we therefore understand the threshing calf as Christ? in what manner do you say?

Cyril: For has not the law through Moses named for us the threshing oxen the holy disciples? for he said enigmatically: ‘You will not muzzle an ox threshing.’ Which also the blessed Paul having understood very clearly: ‘Does God care for the oxen?