On Elijah and Fasting 41–78

But what is this? While I discuss fasting, I hear the din of banquets. Unless I am mistaken, my sermon smelled of dinner. The sound of the readings, then, invites us; examples of impatience do not frighten us. For the people that could not bear to wait for him who was fasting and bringing the things of the law 'sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play.' We see that sacrilege was joined to drunkenness. For as continence is the mother of faith, so drunkenness is the mother of faithlessness. Into what crime does it not hurl men?

Men sit at the doors of taverns who have no tunic and no money for the following day. They judge emperors and authorities; indeed they think they reign and command armies. Those who are poor in truth become rich through drunkenness. They give gold, distribute money to the people, build cities, who have nothing with which to pay the innkeeper for their drink <except> their own bodies. For the wine boils in them; they do not know what they are saying. They are rich while they are drunk; soon, when they have digested the wine, they see that they are beggars. In one day they drink the labors of many days.

From drunkenness men rise to arms; weapons succeed cups. Blood is poured out instead of wine, and wine has shed blood itself. How strong men seem to themselves in wine, how wise, how eloquent! How handsome too and comely, when they cannot stand! The mind must totter, the tongue stammer, a bloodless pallor overspread the face, so that the stench of drunkenness is horrible. Barbarians rush to the sword, the common people to brawls. If one of them has been struck with a fist, you may see the wounded man shed tears of wine from his face and chant pitiable laments. Drunkenness has this one thing: it softens and loosens the hearts of the drunk; for as fire tests hard iron, so the heat of wine melts even the hearts of proud men.

All seem equal to themselves in wine; no one is inferior. The poor man does not yield to the rich, since he does not know he is poor; the weak not to the strong, since all his strength is in drinking; the beggar not to the wealthy, the low-born not to the honored, since the drinkers count as king the one who has surpassed the men in drinking. And rightly it is written: 'Wine in drunkenness is equal life to men.' But would that you heard what follows too: 'Drink it moderately, so that you may be sober.' You have nothing to accuse wine of. It was created for gladness, not for drunkenness, from the beginning. It is the exultation of soul and heart, if you drink moderately; but immoderate drinking rouses to anger and causes many ruins.

But perhaps they may say these are the drinking bouts of common and very light people. Let us come, then, to the banquets of these powerful and very strong men. I will not bring forward here perfumed youths or those crowned with roses, such as they say was that one who, dripping with perfumes, wreathed with flowers, leaning on harlots, drunk from drinking before dawn and accompanied by the daylight of candles, entered the lecture hall of a philosopher who was discoursing; and having heard him, they say, he gradually took off his garlands, wiped off the perfumes, said farewell to the prostitutes, and afterward turned out so great a philosopher that he who had before been the laughingstock of drunkenness became an example of sobriety. For I do not grudge them one reformed man, so as to show that the kind of luxury I describe is not invented by me. Certainly, if he came to his senses from wine, he was still always drunk with sacrilege.

Away, then, with slippery youths; we come to the banquets of warriors. Dinner must be taken among arms. Here are military attendants who serve, girded with gold, their loins supported by Babylonian belts; their necks shine with golden collars, they cover their girdles with golden studs, they sheathe their knives in golden scabbards, with which they fight when the food is to be divided. Boys stand by with gleaming hair, from a barbarian race, chosen for these uses, differing in the succession of their ages. You would see ranks of various peoples, you would think it a battle line drawn up; the silver vessels set out, you would think it a procession; a horn in the middle full of wine, an instrument not of battle but of banqueting, a trumpet to rouse those reclining to a contest.

First the battle is opened with smaller cups, as by skirmishers. But this is not a form of sobriety; it is a discipline of drinking. For just as tragic actors first raise their voice gradually until they open the passage of a moistened voice, so that afterward they can resound with great shouts, so these too at the beginning exercise themselves with preliminary cups, to provoke thirst, lest perhaps they quench it and, sated, be unable to drink afterward. So when things begin to grow warm, they call for larger cups; a martial fervor blazes up; thirst boils with the food, and when it seems lessened it is restored with stronger, less-mixed drink. The cups compete with the courses and are often sent back between bites. Then, as the drinking goes on further and more intensely, there are various great contests over who excels in drinking. It is a grave mark against anyone if he excuses himself, if he perhaps thinks the wine should be mixed with water. And this goes on until they reach the second tables.

But when the meal is finished, you would think it is time to rise: then they renew their drinking from the start; when they have finished, then they say they are beginning; then shallow bowls are brought, then the largest mixing bowls, like instruments of war. And lest you think this unmeasured, a measure is set out, they compete before a judge, the decision is made by law. Fury is their president of the games, weakness their pay, guilt the prize of victory. The doubtful outcome of the war hangs long in the balance; for that fury is warlike. The hands of the cupbearers pouring the wine give out, and the labors of the cooks serving hot dishes, and those who weigh out the very measures with careful scale so as to spill nothing; the drinkers do not give out.

These alone are contests without excuse. In war, if one sees himself inferior, he turns his arms away and earns pardon; here, if one turns his cup over, he is pressed to drink. In the wrestling pit, if one raises his hand, he has no share in the palm but is free from injury; at banquets, even if he withdraws his hand from the wine, it is poured into his mouth. All are made drunk; victors and vanquished all lie drunk, most asleep. Nor may they be carried to burial before the host sees himself avenged on all, so as to avenge his loss. But the one who does not feel the losses thinks this the glory of his table, if all go out from it wounded and injured as if from the arena.

A sad spectacle for Christian eyes and of a pitiable appearance! You may see young men, terrible in strength to their enemies, carried out of the banquet and carried back to the banquet, filled so that they may empty, and emptied so that they may drink. If anyone is more modest, so that he blushes to rise when he can no longer hold the immoderate drink, he pants more violently, groans, sweats, and betrays by signs what he is ashamed to confess. There each one relates his battles, there they proclaim their brave deeds, soaked in wine they tell of their trophies, and, loosened by sleep, they do not know in their minds what their tongues utter. Each one snores and drinks, sleeps and fights; and when at last they rise, the warriors cannot stand; they totter as they go out. The slaves laugh at their masters' disgrace; they carry the fighting soldier in their hands and put him on his horse. So they drift this way and that like ships without a helmsman and, as if struck by a wound, slide to the ground unless they are caught by the slaves. Others are carried back on shields; it becomes a procession of mockery. Those whom in the morning you had seen distinguished in arms, threatening in face, in the evening you may see laughed at with impunity even by little boys, wounded without iron, killed without battle, routed without an enemy, trembling without old age, wilting in the very flower of youth.

Who mixed such a cup of fury, who poured so much poison into minds? Man risks being mud from his body, and he himself is guilty of voluntary madness, of self-chosen corruption. Yet you too are not excused, who invite them as friends and send them out as enemies. How much better if you had poured your wine on the ground! But even the earth makes drunk, and makes even the wild beasts fiercer if the smell of wine has touched them. Indeed, if they enter a vineyard at vintage time, they are usually inflamed with drunkenness. Why do losses without grace delight you? You invite to gladness, you compel to death; you invite to dinner, you wish to carry out to the tomb; you promise food, you inflict torments; you offer wines, you pour in poisons. For everything that harms is poison. It takes away the senses, burns the inner organs, troubles sleep, afflicts the head.

Indeed the power of wine is greater than that of poison. Poison is driven out by wine, not wine by poison. Rightly God, through Moses, compared wine not only to poison but even to the poison of dragons, saying: 'Their wine is the fury of dragons and the incurable wrath of asps.' And he added well 'incurable'; for many are cured of the rest of serpents' poison, no one of drunkenness. Certainly by poison the flesh is wounded, the mind is unharmed; drunkenness adds to the death of the body the crime of the mind as well. Notice too that the poison of faithlessness is declared under the name of wine. For he says above of the foreigners who did not know God: 'For their wine is of the vine of Sodom, and their vine is the vine of Gomorrah; their grape is a grape of gall, a cluster of bitterness in them.'

You think that, as if drunk with wine, I have intemperately mixed this discourse into my preaching on fasting: yet how much I have passed over on account of these very strong men, how much less have I said than the Lord has spoken! You have heard what he said through Moses; hear what is written in the book of the words of Isaiah. For the Lord inveighs against men of this kind and says: 'Woe to those who rise in the morning and pursue strong drink, who are drunk in the evening; for wine will burn them. For with cithara and psaltery and drums they drink wine, but they do not regard the works of God and do not consider the works of his hands.' 'To whom woe,' it says, 'to whom judgments, to whom tumult?' Different things to each, all things to drunkards. For woe to those who are drunk in the evening! What, then, of those who are soaked even before evening and often until daylight? So contests have their due woe. They join lawsuits, leap into slaughter, come to judgment or are summoned. So they also have judgments as defendants. Sometimes a more serious tumult arises, because the drunkard's mind is perverted by wine: 'and he does not remember king or magistrate,' as it is written, 'and makes everything speak in talents.' 'And when they have drunk they do not remember friendship or brotherly kinship. But after the tumult they take up swords, and when they have been drowned by wine and have risen, they themselves do not remember what they have done.' So they have a fitting reward for the tumult too.

I had certainly passed over the cithara, psalteries, and drums, which we know are often brought into banquets of this kind, so that lusts may be roused by wine and song. Many even, in the Persian manner, order women fit for the company of drunkards to be brought in, and receive the bowls from them and lie down beneath them as they sit. And they hold this rite as a sacred observance, the service of drunkenness. The barbarians, then, have wine too: the Romans gladly indulge them in it, so that they themselves may be loosened in drink and, enervated by drunkenness, be conquered. Nor does wine alone cause drunkenness, but strong drink too. Indeed the Hebrews call every drink that intoxicates by the name sicera.

Not without reason, then, is there woe to those who seek the drink of drunkenness in the morning, who ought to give praises to God, anticipate the light, and meet with prayer the sun of righteousness, who visits his own and rises for us, if we rise for Christ, not for wine and strong drink. Hymns are being sung by the devout, and you hold a cithara? Psalms are being sung, and you take up a psaltery or a drum? Rightly woe, because you abandon salvation and choose death. It is scarcely dawn, and already they are running through the taverns. Wine is sought, carpets are shaken out; they hurry to spread the couch, they set out silver flagons and gilded cups.

'Woe,' it says, 'to those who seek these things!' 'Babylon is a golden cup in the hand of the Lord, making all the earth drunk. All the nations have drunk of her wine; therefore they have been shaken. And suddenly Babylon has fallen and been broken.' The golden cup, then, has been broken, because Babylon, which is the golden cup, has been broken. But though she boasts of gold and value, she too is in the Lord's power. Indeed she is broken by divine indignation. Why a golden cup? Because one who lacks truth seeks enticement, so that at least a precious appearance may entice some to drink.

Set before your eyes the pomp of this world: you see a fine-looking enticement, but an empty charm. Let not vessels of gold and silver lead you on; we too have a treasure in earthen vessels. The apostolic vessel is earthen, but in it is the treasure of Christ. Woe to those who pursue strong drink in the morning! This vessel is golden, it is a cup: in that cup is the poison of death, the poison of lust, the poison of drunkenness. Whoever drinks it is shaken and falls. He is shaken not only in body but also with a troubled heart; for to be shaken belongs to sin.

Indeed Cain, going out from the sight of God, dwelt in the land of Nod, which by interpretation signifies 'commotion.' So one who is made drunk by the golden cup is moved by sin. Why do you place yourself under the curse of that fratricide Cain, so that you tremble and are moved? But the persecutors of the Lord too, passing by, shook their heads; for an evil spirit drove them, which is accustomed to move the bodies it has filled. And that trembling stops when the spirit departs, but drunkenness gives a perpetual trembling. The bodies of drunkards sweat wine; if you touch them lightly, you squeeze out wine.

Drunkenness is the fuel of lust, the incitement of madness, the poison of folly. It changes men's senses and forms. Through it men become neighing horses, since, inflamed by the natural heat of a warm body and, beyond nature, by the heat of wine, they cannot restrain themselves and are roused to bestial lusts, so that they keep no prescribed time at which it is fitting to indulge in intercourse. They lose their voice, change color, their eyes burn, they pant with their mouths, they snort through their nostrils, they blaze into fury, they lose their senses. Hence dangerous frenzy, hence the heavy punishment of the stone, hence deadly indigestion, hence frequent vomiting of those who pour out half-eaten food with blood from their inner organs. I am lying if the Lord did not say the same things through Jeremiah, saying: 'Drink and be drunk and vomit, and you will fall and not rise.'

Hence too vain images, uncertain sight, unsteady gait. They often jump over shadows as if they were ditches. The earth sways for them; it seems suddenly to rise and tilt as if it were turning over. In fear they fall on their faces and grasp the ground with their hands, or they think themselves shut in by mountains coming together. There is a murmur in their ears like the crash of a tossing sea and shores resounding with the waves. If they see dogs, they think them lions and flee. Some dissolve in senseless laughter, others weep in inconsolable grief, others see irrational terrors. Awake they dream, asleep they quarrel. Life to them is a dream, and their sleep is long. They cannot be roused by any voices; however hard you think they must be goaded, unless they have come to their senses they cannot wake.

Hence Jeremiah rightly thinks such a man should be mourned as a superfluous creature. For what is a drunken man but a superfluous creature? So he says: 'As with the weeping of Jazer I will weep for you, O vine, because the city of Jazer is deserted,' and further on: 'There was wine in your presses: in the morning they did not tread, and at noon they did not make it.' Jazer means 'superfluous making' — for moderation is natural, whatever is beyond measure is reckoned superfluous — so is drunkenness, which is lamented with prophetic weeping. Hence the apostle says: 'Do not be drunk with wine, in which is luxury, but be filled with the Spirit.' There is, then, a drunkenness of guilt, and there is also one of grace. And perhaps this latter is more of nature than of grace, because, made in the image and likeness of God, we ought to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

What shall I say of the oaths of drinkers? Why mention the pledges which they think it wicked to violate? 'Let us drink,' they say, 'to the health of the emperors,' so that whoever does not drink is guilty of disloyalty; for he seems not to love the emperor who has not drunk to his health. O the homage of pious devotion! 'Let us drink to the health of the army, to the valor of the counts, to the health of our sons.' And they judge that these vows reach God, like those who bring cups to the tombs of the martyrs and drink there until evening; they do not believe they can be heard otherwise. O the folly of men, who think drunkenness a sacrifice, who suppose that drunkenness pleases those who learned by fasting to endure their passion!

How many we know who have come from an intemperate banquet to torture! While in drunkenness they contend over their command and promise themselves kingdoms and pledge honors to others, the unhappy men, who did not know what they were saying, were led to punishment. Hence many good judges did not think that what was said in drunkenness should be held as a crime. Many also use wine like the rack, and those from whom tortures do not extract the word of betrayal they test with drinking, so that they may betray the state of their country, the safety of the citizens, the plans of their defense; for courage often overcomes pain, but drink drives out faithfulness. I have known many, ulcerated by the cords, who denied their own name: who among the cups has hidden what he wished to keep secret?

Why should I recount what I have heard of a kind not of cup but of flood, by which wines are poured into men's mouths as through pipes or channels? Should I rather reckon these men or wineskins? Yet wineskins themselves, unless the pouring is moderate, often burst. Wines also run down into men's throats flowing through a horn, and if anyone takes a breath, a crime has been committed, the battle line broken: he is held to have been moved from his post. Water running down from Lebanon dissolves rocky cliffs; how do they think the force of streams of wine does no harm to the soft inner organs of drunkards?

They say too that elephants draw up a great deal of water with their trunk, yet are content with moderate drinking to quench their thirst; but if they have been cheated of their wage by some innkeeper, in indignation they fill the hollow of their trunk not to drink but to pour it out, and in sudden floods they drench the tavern of the man on whom they thought they should take revenge. Lakes are suddenly dried for drinking and suddenly poured out; everything swims. Who would not marvel that such huge bodies of beasts hold nothing superfluous?

But why do we speak of men, when even women, who ought to apply a more careful guard of sobriety to their chastity, drink to drunkenness? Then, getting up — women for whom it is not fitting even within the privacy of the house to be heard or seen by strangers — they go out in public with uncovered head and wanton face! The apostle bids women be silent even in church and instructs them to ask their husbands at home. These women in the streets lead shameless dances even in the sight of men, under the gaze of intemperate young men, tossing their hair, trailing their tunics, their cloaks torn, their arms bare, clapping their hands, leaping with their feet, shouting with their voices, rousing the young men's lusts toward themselves with an actor's movements, a wanton eye, a disgraceful jest. A ring of young men looks on, and a pitiable theater is made. Amid the falls of the dancers and the lapses of the onlookers, heaven is defiled by an impure sight, and the earth is polluted by a shameful dance, beaten by most obscene leaps.

How shall I speak patiently, pass over piously, lament fittingly? Wine has brought us the loss of so many souls. For if wine and women make men depart from God, because drunkenness and lust are both enticements to transgression, if they <do so> singly and separately, what will they do <united>? Hence not without reason a certain wise man before us said: 'A drunken woman is a great wrath.'

What wonder, then, if the souls of women are deceived by wine, when all those tribes of the fathers, when they drank water from the rock, ate manna, conquered the strongest nations, and there was not one weak among them? But when they began to desire meat and in their desires turned back toward Egypt, of so many thousands of men none but two deserved to reach the land of promise. So we may gather from this what good sobriety is and what evil intemperance is: when they murmured, seeking the delicacies of Egypt, they died by serpents; when they passed over the path of the Red Sea, they drank water. Do we not, then, fear the example, do we not flee delicacies, lest they cheat us of gaining the good things to come?

And why should I use the sayings of others? Let us hear what the well-fed and luxurious themselves hope for. For the prophet Isaiah brings them in saying: 'Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die,' and rightly he cries out: 'Howl, ships of Carthage, for they have perished and will be no more.' This is said of the vision of Tyre, which we know was a luxurious city. And therefore it is the ninth vision, not the seventh or eighth, because it keeps neither the law nor the grace of the gospel, since on the lawful sabbath it is forbidden to kindle the fires of lust, and in the course of the gospel the eighth day of the resurrection shines; and the same day is first and eighth, because the Lord's day recurs on itself. Luxury, then, has neither faith nor observance of discipline; luxury is the seedbed and origin of vices. And do not think I have spoken against the apostle, because he says that avarice is the root of all evils; for luxury is the mother of avarice. For when one has exhausted his own means by luxurious living, he afterward seeks greedy gains. You have heard what was read today.

'Merchants of the Phoenicians,' it says, 'crossing the sea; on many waters the seed of the merchants, like a harvest that is carried away.' These cities are neighbors, Tyre of Phoenicia and Sidon, neighbors in place as in vices, merchants seeking little profits from trade by dangerous crossing of the sea. Anxious is the life of men, restless their way of life and always in a kind of whirlwind, more changeable than the very winds by which it is rolled and often tossed this way and that. Surely you complain of frequent shipwrecks: who compels you to sail? As if you did not, by your envy of wealth, make even the lands unsafe and rouse very many to robbery! God did not make the sea for sailing, but for the beauty of the element. He spread out the broad surfaces of the sea, surely, to enclose the lands with its strait, so that you would not wander farther as a vagrant and exile. But the sea is tossed by storm: you ought, then, to fear it, not to presume on it. The innocent element has done no wrong; human rashness is its own danger. Indeed he who does not sail does not know how to fear shipwreck. The Lord said: 'Have dominion over the fish of the sea'; he did not say: 'Sail out on the waves.' Indeed the prophet Jonah too, who was sent to Nineveh to preach repentance, because he wished to sail to flee from the face of God, was troubled by a storm, picked out by lot, thrown into the sea, and taken in by the whale.

The prophet David too says, when he recounts God's grace toward man: 'You have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts <of the field, the birds of heaven, and the fish of the sea, which pass along the paths of the sea>.' He granted to the fish, not to men, to pass along the path of the sea. The sea was given you for food, not for danger: use it for food, not for trade. Why do you create danger for yourself from pleasure? Why do you probe the depths of a separate element? Why do you disturb the higher secrets of the world? Why, finally, do you, an impatient sailor, strive to furrow and plow the waves so often? Why do you so often try the harmless seas and provoke storms? O insatiable avarice of merchants! Even the sea yields to you, and the ocean cannot bear your restlessness. Indeed, plowed by merchants returning so often, the sea said: 'Be ashamed, Sidon.' This is as the voice of a weary element saying: 'Be ashamed, Sidon,' that is: you trader accuse my waves, when you are yourself more restless than the waves. Be ashamed at least with shame, since you are not moved by danger. The winds are more modest than your desires. They have their times of rest; your pursuits of gain never take a holiday. And when the storm is at rest, your ships are never at rest. The wave is hunted under the oar when it rests from the wind.

'I have not been in labor,' it says, 'nor given birth, nor reared young men.' Why do they disturb me whom I do not know, whom I do not recognize? 'Go to Carthage; howl, you who inhabit the islands!' Above he said: 'Howl, ships of Carthage!' For the Tyrians founded Carthage, and therefore the Carthaginians follow the luxury of their founders, a discolored succession of wickedness poured into them, worse heirs of the worst vices. And he rightly called the luxurious 'ships.' As those are tossed by the wind, so these by food and wine. Bodies filled with drink inhabit the islands, resound with shipwrecks, are beaten by the waves of drunkenness, and rest neither by day nor by night. Of these merchants, then, the seed is in the water, <in the water> is the harvest's fruit. For they sow their labors in the water, so as to reap dangers; in the water their crop sprouts, in the water the harvest abounds, the fruit itself is in the water, never safe and solid. Hence he rightly says: 'He who sowed on land did not enter into trade' — rather, he who sowed in heaven. But there is also a good land, in which whoever has sown, heavenly fruits will spring up for him.

'Howl,' he says — he says it again — 'ships of Carthage, for your stronghold has perished. And it will be in that day, Tyre will be left,' and further on: 'And after seventy years Tyre will be like a harlot's song.' See what words the prophet uses, and he does not shrink from the cheapness of such words. We sometimes shrink from them, not because our tongue is chaster than theirs, but because our authority is less. For there is a greater force of things in the expression of such words, so that those who do not blush at offenses may blush at least at the names of offenses. 'Tyre,' he says, 'will be like a harlot's song.' See that, when someone sees those dances led and shameful words sung, he does not say: 'Behold, Tyre has become like a harlot's song.'

The oracle of the prophetic announcement has been fulfilled. And he added: 'Take a cithara, wander about, forgotten harlot city; play the cithara well, sing many songs, that you may be remembered. And after seventy years Tyre will be like a harlot's song, and God will visit Tyre.' Hence we can also take in a good sense the song of that harlot Rahab, who received Joshua's spies with a faithful mind. For the Lord too says: 'We sang to you, and you did not dance,' and David says: 'Sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth'; that is, the harlot's song, which that former harlot, the earth in Adam and Eve, sang, the harlot in the people of the nations. This harlot made very many good harlots, of whom the Lord Jesus said to that chosen and elder people of God: 'Tax collectors and harlots go before you into the kingdom of God.'

Since, then, we have so merciful a Lord, who pardons even grave error, let us turn from vices, let us not depart from the law, let us carry out the Lord's command with the diligent zeal of servants. What have we to do with impurities and immodesties, what with the works of the devil? You heard today in the reading that has been gone through what the legion said: 'What have I to do with you, Jesus, Son of God?' You too say, if perhaps you see the devil's temptations fighting against you: 'What have I to do with you, Belial? I am a servant of Christ, redeemed by his blood; I have given myself wholly into his ownership. What have I to do with you? I do not know your works, I seek nothing of yours, I possess nothing of yours, I desire nothing of yours.' How much more ought we to separate ourselves from the devil, if he distinguishes himself from Christ? And if we were liable to him in anything, now we are not. We have fled to the physician. He has healed our former wounds, and if any bitterness remains, the remedy will not be lacking. Even if we have done some wrong, he who once forgave will not remember it. Even if we have offended gravely, we have found a great physician, we have received the great medicine of his grace; for great medicine takes away great sins.

We also have many things at hand by which we may redeem our sins. You have money: redeem your sin. The Lord is not for sale, but you yourself are for sale. You have been sold by your sins: redeem yourself by your works, redeem yourself by your money. Money is cheap, but mercy is precious. For 'almsgiving frees from sin,' and elsewhere: 'The ransom of a man's life is his riches,' and in the gospel: 'Make friends for yourselves by the mammon of iniquity.' Poison too is often tempered by an antidote, that is, poison is driven out by poison, death repelled by poison, life preserved. Do you too, as a good steward, make from the instrument of avarice the support of mercy, from the enticement of corruption the grace of sincerity.

You have heard what was read today: 'Behold, the Lord comes to lay waste the world.' As if the holy prophet were pointing with his hand, as if he saw with his eyes the coming day of judgment, so he says: 'Behold, the Lord comes to lay waste the world.' Rather, since in the Spirit even things to come are revealed to the prophets as present, therefore he wished to show us too what he saw, so as to call us back from error to conversion.

Yet no one ought to be broken when he hears that the Lord will lay waste the world, lest perhaps he say: 'Granted, we have committed grave sins: what wrong has heaven done, what the earth, what the sea, that he should lay them waste too? Why does such fair adornment perish?' Such an opinion belongs to a narrow mind. But if you look more deeply, you will find that what you think is against us is for us; you will judge that what you consider against the world is for the world. The stadium is not always full of spectators, not always busy with contests, not always thick with dust; but when there are contests, then there are people at the show, wrestlers in the pit, dust in the stadium. When the contests are run, the gathering breaks up; each goes away either a victor to favor or vanquished to disgrace. The crown exalts the victor; shame weighs on the vanquished, injury torments him. If anyone, then, enters the stadium afterward, sees it empty of crowds, and asks the president of the games why the stadium is empty, why the contests are silent, why the festival is on holiday, the one who presides over the games will answer: 'The athletes must rest, the spectators must rest.' For what is the fruit of labor but rest after labor? Likewise the world too must at some time be dissolved, so that there may be rest for the weary.