Commentaria in Leviticum
13. HE SHALL TAKE A VIRGIN (the High Priest) TO WIFE.—God commanded this on account of the honour and dignity of the supreme priesthood: and that first, because it would not have become the High Priest to take one defiled and known by another; secondly, “that the sacred seed might be received in the untouched and pure womb of a virgin, and that in no way the birth of this stock be mingled with other families,” says Philo, book 2 On Monarchy; thirdly, that, by having formed a habit with minds not yet depraved, the priests might more easily accommodate them to their own ways. For the minds of virgins are docile and flexible to virtue, and most ready for discipline.
Tropologically St. Cyril, book 12 On Adoration: “It was signified,” he says, “by this marriage of the High Priest with a virgin, that Christ would deal not with impious and corrupted souls, but with the most chaste and purest, as with virgins spiritually, and make them fruitful, and call them joined to himself by kindred.”
Allegorically: Christ, says Rudolph, betroths to himself not the Synagogue, corrupt and repudiated by him, but the Church of the Gentiles; whom, when she was a harlot, he loved, and to join her worthily to himself, made a virgin; and noble, now in morals, afterwards in mansions.
14. DEFILED.—The Chaldee, profaned, that is, vitiated and polluted. So the Septuagint; for the wife of the High Priest had to be altogether pure. So Julius Caesar dismissed his wife Pompeia, whom report said had been corrupted by Clodius; and when, on that account, a day was set for Clodius’s trial and he himself was summoned as a witness, he said nothing sinister of her; and when the prosecutor asked:
Why then did you dismiss her? he answered: “Because Caesar’s wife ought to be free from all sinister suspicion and altogether pure.” The same was to be said here of the High Priest. Tertullian, in his book On Monogamy, adds here: “My priests shall marry no more”; as if second marriages were here forbidden them, and they were to be monogamists. Perhaps the edition of Theodotion or Symmachus had something of the kind, as Pamelius suspects. For neither the Septuagint nor the Hebrew has it: though here the credit of Tertullian wavers; for he wrote this book in heresy; for he contends in this book that second marriages are unlawful for Christians, which is a proven error. BUT A MAIDEN OF HIS OWN PEOPLE.—Philo adds that the High Priest could not wed a wife except of the priestly stock; but this is not clear from the divine law, nay the histories rather intimate the contrary: for from them it is evident that the high priests were wont to marry daughters of princes and kings, who were not of Levi, but of Juda. So Joiada married Josabeth, daughter of Joram king of Juda, as Josephus testifies, book 9 of the Antiquities, chapter 8.
Verse 15. 15. LEST HE MINGLE THE STOCK OF HIS KINDRED WITH THE COMMON PEOPLE OF HIS NATION—as if to say: Let him not take a wife of the common people, but a noble one. The Septuagint render: Let him not profane his name among his people, and that first on account of the dignity of the priesthood; secondly, that the High Priest, being joined by affinity with the kings and princes, may so much the more freely and better teach them the worship of God and true religion. I AM THE LORD WHO SANCTIFY HIM—who command him to be holy, and to abstain from the contamination of a common and plebeian wife; so “sanctify” is taken
17. WHOSOEVER OF THY SEED HATH A BLEMISH (such a deformity as follows), HE SHALL NOT OFFER BREAD (of proposition, which even the lesser priests offer fresh every sabbath, the former being removed) TO HIS GOD, NEITHER SHALL HE APPROACH TO MINISTER TO HIM.—These words are not in the Hebrew but are understood: for those having a blemish were kept away from the altar of holocausts, of incense, and the candlestick, as well as from the table of the loaves of proposition.
Verse 18. 18. IF HE BE BLIND (behold these are the blemishes which make irregular, so that one having any of them cannot be an Aaronic priest), IF LAME, IF HE HAVE A LITTLE, OR A GREAT, OR A CROOKED NOSE.—For “if he have a little nose” the Hebrew is charum, which the Hebrews render flat-nosed, though, if you look to origin and root, it properly signifies neither nose nor flat nose, but cut off. So for “a great or crooked nose” the Hebrew is saru’a, which properly signifies excrescent, such as a large or turned-back nose, to which therefore the Hebrews appropriated this name. The Hebrews, besides these blemishes, assign a hundred and forty others which make a man unfit for the priesthood: see the little book of Precepts, negative precept 308.
IN HIS EYE, OR A CONTINUAL SCAB, OR A DRY SCURF IN HIS BODY (scurf is a kind of dry scab, creeping through the skin with itching), OR A RUPTURE.
21. WHOSOEVER HATH A BLEMISH (any of those already mentioned), HE SHALL NOT APPROACH TO OFFER SACRIFICES TO THE LORD, NOR BREAD TO HIS GOD.—He repeats what went before; the bread here, then, is the same as the victims and sacrifices, which are as it were the bread, that is, the food, of God. So the Chaldee and the Septuagint. Hence it follows: “He shall eat nevertheless of the loaves that are offered in the sanctuary,” that is, he shall eat of the flesh and sacrifices offered to God. So Abulensis and others. And therefore by a like phrase in Hebrew the flesh of Christ offered to God in the Eucharist is rightly called bread by St. John, chapter 6, and St. Paul, 1 Corinthians 11, chiefly because it lies hidden under the species of bread; but not conversely is bread rightly called body and flesh, so that you might say of bread: “This is my body,” that is, this bread is my body. So bread is also taken for victims, in the last verse of the next chapter.
23. YET SO, THAT HE ENTER NOT WITHIN THE VEIL (within the tabernacle or holy place) (to burn incense, light the lamps, and put the loaves of proposition on the table), NOR APPROACH TO THE ALTAR of holocausts, to offer victims.
I AM THE LORD WHO SANCTIFY THEM—who command them to be holy and pure from all unseemliness and blemish. All these things, says Philo, are to be referred figuratively to the perfection of the soul; for if the mortal body of the priest must be inspected, lest any contact be defiled by a fault, how much more the immortal soul formed to the image of God? So he himself, book 2 On Monarchy.
Tropologically, St. Gregory, part 1 of the Pastoral, last chapter, and from him Rudolph: “Blind is he who, pressed down by the darkness of the present life, knows not whither to stretch the step of his work; lame, who indeed sees, but through infirmity of mind cannot perfectly fulfil what he sees; he has a small nose, whose discretion is small.” Hence Canticles 7 it is said: “Thy nose is as the tower that is in Libanus”; because Holy Church sees through discretion from what causes temptations proceed, and discerns from afar the coming wars of vices; a large and crooked nose is immoderate subtlety of discretion; which, while it has grown beyond what is fit, itself confounds the rectitude of its action. He has a broken foot or hand who is void of good works”; or, as St. Cyril, book 12 On Adoration, who does not advance wholly to worthy actions, but does the work of God imperfectly and negligently. “Crookbacked is he whom earthly care presses down, so that he never looks to things above; blear-eyed is he whose sense and mind nature sharpens, but depravity of conduct confounds; he has a pearl in the eye who, ascribing to himself the whiteness of justice or wisdom, by arrogance shuts himself out from the light of heavenly knowledge; he has a continual scab, whom wantonness of the flesh masters; the dry scurf, whom avarice; he is ruptured who in hidden things, that is, in the mind, bears the weight of baseness.” So also Theodoret, question 30, and Cyril above.
Now if God required so great cleanness of the Jews offering beasts, how much does he require of priests and Christians offering and eating the body of the Lord? John Moschus tells in the Spiritual Meadow, chapter 150, that a Bishop of Rumelia celebrating before Pope Agapitus stopped, because as usual he did not see the Holy Spirit descend visibly upon the host; and being asked by Agapitus the cause of the delay, he answered: “Remove from the altar the deacon who holds the fan.” When he was removed the usual signs appeared, and the Bishop completed the sacrifice. Behold, the improbity of a deacon delayed the sacrifice of so holy a Bishop. The same befell St. Chrysostom, on account of a deacon casting his eyes on a woman, Metaphrastes relates in the Life of St. Chrysostom. Let Christians, therefore, flee this rupture.
Palladius in the Lausiac History, chapter 20, relates that a certain priest celebrating in a state of fornication was struck by God with a cancer, which so ate his head that the whole bone appeared on the crown; him the Blessed Macarius cured by imposition of hands, after he had first promised that he would sin no more, nor minister at the altar, but embrace a lay state.
On the contrary, to the pure and holy Christ and the angels assist and minister in the sacrifice, nay even from time to time bring the sacred host.
So to St. Catherine of Siena, a most holy virgin, desiring communion, and unable to receive it because of the murmurings of some, Christ himself brought a particle of the consecrated host from the altar, as Raymund of Capua attests, from whose hands the sacred host was snatched away, book 2 of her Life, chapter 12.
So St. Stanislaus Kostka, novice of our Order, by the guidance of St. Barbara, entering his chamber between two angels, received most joyfully the Eucharist from their hands (which in a dangerous illness he had most desired), as our Sacchinus relates in his Life, and P. Ribadeneira, book 3 of the Life of Francis Borgia, chapter 6.
The Blessed Macarius told Palladius, as he himself says in the Lausiac History, chapter 20, “that he had observed at the time of communion that he never gave the offering to Marcus the exercitator, but an angel gave it to him from the altar; he saw only the finger of the hand of him who gave.”
St. Onuphrius in the desert each week received the Eucharist from the hands of angels, and thence became so heavenly and angelic, as is plain from his Life. I shall bring more at Numbers 4, at the end.