On Catechizing the Uninstructed 1–8

You asked me, brother Deogratias, to write you something on instructing the uninstructed (catechizing beginners) that would be of use to you. For you said that at Carthage, where you are a deacon, people who are to be grounded in the Christian faith from the start are often brought to you, because you are thought to have a rich gift for catechizing, owing both to your knowledge of the faith and to the pleasantness of your speech; but that you yourself are almost always in difficulties over how that very thing by which, through believing, we are Christians is to be conveyed fittingly: where the narration is to begin and how far it is to be carried; whether, when the narration is finished, we ought to add some exhortation, or only precepts, by observing which the person we are speaking to may know that the Christian life and profession are kept. You confessed and complained that it has often happened to you that in a long and lukewarm discourse you seemed worthless to yourself and wearisome, not to mention to the one you were instructing by your speaking and to the others who were present as listeners; and that you were driven by this necessity to press me, by the love I owe you, not to think it a burden amid my occupations to write you something on this subject. For my part, I am pressed not only by the love and service I owe to you personally, but also by that which I owe universally to our mother the Church, not to refuse in any way, but rather to undertake with ready and devoted will, whatever help I can give by my labour through the bounty of our Lord, when the same Lord bids me help those whom he has made my brothers. For the more I desire the Lord's money to be paid out widely, the more it is my duty, if I learn that the stewards who are my fellow servants find any difficulty in paying it out, to do what lies in me so that they may be able to do easily and readily what they wish to do diligently and zealously.

But as to what concerns your own reflection on this, I would not have you troubled because your discourse has often seemed to you poor and tedious. For it may be that it did not seem so to the one you were instructing, but that, because you longed to be heard saying something better, what you were saying seemed to you unworthy of others' ears. For my own discourse almost always displeases me too. I am eager for a better one, which I often enjoy inwardly before I begin to unfold it in audible words; and when I manage it less well than it is known to me, I am saddened that my tongue could not be equal to my heart. For I want my hearer to understand all that I understand, and I feel that I am not speaking so as to achieve this; chiefly because that understanding floods the mind as with a swift flash, while the speech is slow and drawn out and far unlike it; and while the speech is unrolling, the understanding has already hidden itself in its secret place. Yet because it has stamped certain traces on the memory in a wonderful way, these traces last through the brief delays of the syllables; and from these same traces we produce the sounding signs that are called a language, Latin or Greek or Hebrew or any other, whether these signs are only thought or also uttered by the voice; whereas the traces themselves are neither Latin nor Greek nor Hebrew nor proper to any other nation, but are formed in the mind as a facial expression is in the body. For anger is called one thing in Latin, another in Greek, and another and another in the variety of other languages; but the face of an angry man is neither Latin nor Greek. So not all nations understand when someone says Iratus sum (“I am angry”), but only Latins; yet if the feeling of a mind blazing up comes out into the face and forms its expression, all who look at him perceive that he is angry. But it is not possible to bring out and, as it were, spread before the hearers' senses by the sound of the voice those traces which the understanding stamps on the memory, in the way that a facial expression is open and plain; for those are within, in the mind, while the expression is outside, in the body. Hence we must infer how far the sound of our mouth is from that stroke of the understanding, when it is not even like the impression on the memory. But we, mostly burning keenly for the hearer's benefit, want to speak in the way we understand at that moment, when through that very straining we cannot speak; and because it does not succeed, we are distressed, and as though we were spending our effort in vain, we wilt with weariness; and from that very weariness the discourse itself becomes more languid and duller than it was when it brought on the weariness. But the eagerness of those who wish to hear me often shows me that my speech is not so cold as it seems to me; and I learn from their delight that they draw something useful from it; and I earnestly urge myself not to fail in rendering this ministry, in which I see them receiving well what is offered. So you too, from the very fact that those who are to be grounded in the faith are brought to you quite often, ought to understand that your discourse does not displease others as it displeases you; and you ought not to think yourself unfruitful because you do not unfold the things you perceive as you wish, when perhaps you cannot even perceive them as you wish. For who in this life sees except in a riddle and through a mirror? Nor is love itself so great that it breaks through the darkness of the flesh and pierces into the eternal clear sky from which even these passing things shine in whatever way they do. But because the good advance from day to day toward seeing the day without the rolling of the heavens and without the onset of night, which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it gone up into the heart of man, there is no greater reason why our discourse should grow cheap to us in instructing beginners than that we like to perceive things in an unaccustomed way and are weary of speaking in an accustomed way. And indeed we are heard with much greater pleasure when we ourselves delight in the same work; for the thread of our speech is affected by our very joy and comes out more easily and more acceptably. Therefore it is not a hard task to lay down where the things presented for belief are to be narrated from and how far, nor how the narration is to be varied, so that it is sometimes shorter, sometimes longer, yet always full and complete, and when a shorter and when a longer one is to be used. But by what means one may catechize with joy (for one will be the more pleasing the more one can do so), that is the greatest concern. And the precept on this matter is ready to hand. For if in bodily money, how much more in spiritual, does God love a cheerful giver? But that this cheerfulness should be present at the hour belongs to the mercy of him who gave these commands. So, as God shall suggest, we shall discuss first the manner of the narration, which I know you want; then giving precepts and exhorting; and afterward how this cheerfulness is to be gained.

The narration is full when each person is first catechized from what is written, In the beginning God made heaven and earth, down to the present times of the Church. Yet we ought not for that reason to recite from memory the whole Pentateuch and the whole books of Judges and Kings and Ezra and the whole Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles, if we have learned them word for word, or to unfold and explain in our own words, by narrating, everything contained in these volumes; for which there is neither time nor any need. Rather we should take in everything in summary and general form, choosing certain more wonderful things which are heard with more pleasure and which stand at the very turning points, so that it is not right to show them as if in their wrappings and at once snatch them from sight, but by dwelling on them a while to unfold them, so to speak, and spread them out, and offer them to the hearers' minds to be examined and admired; while the rest is woven in by inserting it in a quick survey. In this way the things we most want to commend stand out more by the lowering of the others; the one we want to rouse by our narration does not reach them tired; and the memory of the one we ought to instruct by teaching is not confused. In everything, certainly, we must not only keep in view the end of the commandment, which is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and faith unfeigned, so that we refer to it all that we say; but the gaze of the one we are instructing by our speaking must also be moved toward it and directed there. For all the things we read in the holy Scriptures that were written before the Lord's coming were written for no other purpose than that his coming should be commended and the future Church foreshadowed, that is, the people of God throughout all nations, which is his body; with all the saints joined to it and counted in, who lived in this world even before his coming, believing that he would come as we believe that he has come. For as Jacob, when he was being born, first put out of the womb a hand, with which he was also holding the foot of his brother who was born before him, and then the head of course followed, and then necessarily the other limbs; yet the head goes before in dignity and power not only those limbs that followed but even the hand itself which went first in birth, and though not in the time of appearing, yet in the order of nature it is first: so also the Lord Jesus Christ, before he appeared in the flesh and came forth, as it were from the womb of his secrecy, to the eyes of men as Mediator between God and men, the man, who is God over all, blessed for ever, sent ahead in the holy patriarchs and prophets a certain part of his body, with which, as with a hand, foretelling that he would be born, he also supplanted the people who proudly went before, by the bonds of the Law as by five fingers. For through five periods of time he did not cease to be foretold and prophesied as coming; and in keeping with this, he through whom the Law was given wrote five books; and the proud, thinking carnally and wishing to establish their own righteousness, were not filled with blessing by the open hand of Christ, but were held back by it clenched and closed; and so their feet were bound and they fell, while we rose and stood upright. Although, then, as I said, the Lord Christ sent ahead a certain part of his body in the saints who preceded him in the time of birth, yet he himself is the head of the body, the Church; and all of them cleaved to the same body of which he is the head, by believing in him whom they foretold. For they were not torn away by running ahead, but rather joined on by obeying. For although a hand can be put out ahead of the head, its connection is nonetheless under the head. Therefore all things that were written before were written for our instruction, and were figures of us, and happened to them in figure; and they were written for our sake, upon whom the end of the ages has come.

And what greater reason is there for the Lord's coming than that God might show his love toward us, commending it powerfully, because while we were still enemies, Christ died for us? And this so that, because the end of the commandment and the fullness of the law is love, we too might love one another, and as he laid down his life for us, so we too might lay down our lives for the brothers; and that, as for God himself, since he loved us first and did not spare his only Son but delivered him up for us all, if we were reluctant to love him, we might at least now not be reluctant to love him in return. For there is no greater invitation to love than to be first in loving; and a mind is too hard which, if it was unwilling to bestow love, is unwilling to repay it. For if we see even in shameful and sordid loves that those who wish to be loved in return do nothing else than reveal and show by whatever proofs they can how much they love; and they try to hold out a kind of image of justice, so that they may in a way demand a return from the hearts they are working to entice; and they themselves burn more ardently when they perceive that the minds they desire are already stirred by the same fire: if, then, a mind that was sluggish is roused when it perceives itself loved, and one that was already glowing is more inflamed when it learns that it is loved in return, it is plain that there is no greater cause by which love is either begun or increased than when one who does not yet love learns that he is loved, or when one who loves first either hopes that he can be loved in return or already finds that he is. And if this holds even in base loves, how much more in friendship? For what else do we guard against in giving offence to friendship than that our friend should think that we either do not love him or love him less than he loves us? If he believes this, he will be colder in the love in which people enjoy one another in mutual intimacy; and if he is not so weak that this offence makes him grow cold toward all love, he holds himself in the kind of love by which he loves not to enjoy but to take care. It is worth noticing, moreover, how, although superiors too wish to be loved by inferiors and delight in their zealous service toward them, and the more they perceive it the more they love them, yet with how great a love the inferior blazes up when he perceives that he is loved by the superior. For there love is more welcome, where it does not burn from the dryness of need but flows from the abundance of kindness. For the one love comes from misery, the other from mercy. And now if the inferior had despaired even of being able to be loved by the superior, he will be moved to love beyond words if the superior has of his own accord deigned to show how much he loves one who would never have dared to promise himself so great a good. But what is higher than God as judge, and what more desperate than man as sinner? Man had given himself over to be guarded and subjugated by proud powers, which cannot make him blessed, all the more as he had despaired that care could be taken of him by the power that does not wish to be exalted by malice but is exalted by goodness. If, then, Christ came chiefly so that man might learn how much God loves him; and might learn it so that he might burn with love for him by whom he was first loved, and might love his neighbour at the command and by the example of him who became our neighbour by loving one who was not his neighbour but a wanderer far away; and if all divine Scripture that was written before was written to foretell the Lord's coming, and whatever was afterward committed to writing and confirmed by divine authority tells of Christ and counsels love: it is plain that not only the whole Law and the Prophets hang on those two commandments of the love of God and of neighbour, which were as yet the only holy Scripture when the Lord said this, but also all the volumes of the divine Letters that were written later for our salvation and committed to memory. Therefore in the Old Testament the New is hidden, and in the New Testament the Old is revealed. According to that hiddenness, carnal people, understanding carnally, both then and now are subjugated by penal fear. According to this revelation, the spiritual, both those then to whom, as they knocked devoutly, even hidden things were opened, and those now who seek without pride, lest even what is open be closed to them, understanding spiritually, have been set free by the gift of love. Since, then, nothing is more opposed to love than envy, and the mother of envy is pride, the same Lord Jesus Christ, God and man, is both a sign of the divine love toward us and an example of human humility among us, so that our great swelling might be healed by a greater contrary medicine. For a proud man is a great misery, but a humble God a greater mercy. With this love, then, set before you as the end to which you refer all that you say, narrate whatever you narrate in such a way that the one you are speaking to may believe by hearing, hope by believing, and love by hoping.

Even from the severity of God, by which the hearts of mortals are shaken with a most wholesome terror, love is to be built up; so that, rejoicing that he is loved by the one he fears, he may dare to love him in return, and may be afraid to displease his love toward him even if he could do so with impunity. For it very rarely happens, or rather never, that anyone comes wishing to become a Christian who has not been struck by some fear of God. For if he wishes to become a Christian expecting some advantage from people whom he thinks he cannot otherwise please, or avoiding some disadvantage from people whose offence or enmity he dreads, he does not so much wish to become one as to pretend. For faith is not a matter of a body that bows in greeting but of a mind that believes. But plainly the mercy of God is often present through the ministry of the catechist, so that, moved by the discourse, he now wishes to become what he had decided to pretend; and when he has begun to wish it, then let us reckon that he has come. And indeed it is hidden from us when one whom we see already present in body comes in mind; but still we ought to deal with him in such a way that this will may arise in him even if it is not there. For nothing is lost, since if it is there, it is certainly strengthened by such action of ours, although we do not know at what time or hour it began. It is useful, certainly, to be told beforehand, if possible, by those who know him, what state of mind he is in, or by what causes he has been moved to come and take up religion. But if there is no one else from whom we can learn this, he himself should be questioned, so that from what he answers we may draw the beginning of our discourse. But if he has come with a pretending heart, desiring human advantages or fleeing disadvantages, he will certainly lie; yet a beginning is to be taken from the very thing he lies about; not so as to refute his lie as though you were sure of it, but so that if he has said he came with a purpose that is truly to be approved, whether he is telling the truth or a falsehood, we may approve and praise the kind of purpose with which he answered that he came, and make him delight in being the kind of person he wishes to seem. But if he has said something other than what ought to be in the mind of one who is to be grounded in the Christian faith, then by rebuking him rather gently and mildly, as one untaught and ignorant, and by showing and praising, briefly and seriously, the truest end of Christian teaching, so as neither to take up the time of the narration to come nor to dare to impose it on a mind not first settled, you should make him wish what, through error or pretence, he did not yet wish.

But if he perhaps answers that he has been warned or frightened by God to become a Christian, he offers us a most welcome opening for beginning with how great God's care is for us. Certainly his attention must be turned from miracles or dreams of this kind to the more solid way of the Scriptures and to more certain oracles; so that he may also know how mercifully that warning was granted to him in advance, before he clung to the holy Scriptures. And it must certainly be shown to him that the Lord himself would not have warned or compelled him to become a Christian and be incorporated into the Church, or taught him by such signs or revelations, unless he had wished him to travel more safely and securely the road already prepared in the holy Scriptures, where he would not look for visible miracles but would learn to hope for invisible things, and would be warned not while asleep but while awake. From there the narration is to begin, from the fact that God made all things very good, and to be carried, as we have said, down to the present times of the Church; in such a way that for each of the things and deeds we narrate, causes and reasons are given by which we refer them to that end of love, from which the eye of one who acts or speaks must never be turned away. For if those who are considered and called good grammarians try to refer the invented fables of the poets, devised for the pleasure of minds whose food is trifles, to some usefulness, although a vain one greedy for worldly fattening, how much more careful ought we to be, lest the true things we narrate, set out without giving their causes, be believed either for empty pleasantness or even for harmful desire? Yet let us not set out these causes in such a way that, leaving the course of the narration, our heart and tongue run off into the knots of more difficult disputation; but let the very truth of the reasoning applied be like gold binding a row of gems, yet not disturbing the series of the ornament by any excess.

When the narration is finished, the hope of the resurrection is to be presented, and, according to the hearer's capacity and strength and the measure of the time available, the matter is to be dealt with against the empty mockery of unbelievers concerning the resurrection of the body; and also the future last judgment, with its goodness toward the good, its severity toward the wicked, and its truth toward all; and after the punishments of the ungodly have been recalled with loathing and horror, the kingdom of the righteous and faithful, and that heavenly city and its joy, are to be proclaimed with longing. Then indeed human weakness is to be instructed and strengthened against temptations and stumbling blocks, whether outside or within the Church itself: outside, against pagans or Jews or heretics; within, against the chaff of the Lord's threshing floor. Not that we should dispute against each kind of perverse people and refute all their wrong opinions by setting out questions; but, as time allows, it should be shown briefly that this was foretold, and what usefulness temptations have for training the faithful, and what medicine there is in the example of the patience of God, who has determined to permit these things until the end. And while he is being instructed against those whose perverse crowds fill the churches in body, at the same time the precepts of a Christian and upright way of life should also be recalled briefly and fittingly, so that he may not be so easily led astray by drunkards, the greedy, cheats, gamblers, adulterers, the sexually immoral, lovers of the shows, those who bind on sacrilegious remedies, enchanters, astrologers, or diviners by any empty and evil arts, and others of this kind, and may not think that he will go unpunished, because he sees many who are called Christians loving these things, doing them, defending them, urging them, and persuading others to them. For what end has been set for those who persist in such a life, and how far they are to be tolerated in the Church itself, from which they are to be separated at the end, must be taught by testimonies from the divine Books. He should also be told beforehand that he will find in the Church many good Christians, truest citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem, if he himself begins to be one. Finally, he must be carefully warned not to place his hope in man; because it cannot easily be judged by man which man is righteous; and even if it could easily be done, the examples of the righteous are set before us not so that we may be justified by them, but so that, imitating them, we may know that we too are justified by the one who justified them. For from this will come what is most to be commended: that when the one who hears us, or rather hears God through us, begins to advance in conduct and knowledge and to enter eagerly on the way of Christ, he will not dare to ascribe this either to us or to himself; but he will love both himself and us and whatever other friends he loves in him and for his sake, who loved him when he was an enemy, so that by justifying him he might make him a friend. Here I do not think you need a teacher to tell you that when time is short, whether yours or that of your hearers, you should deal with things briefly, and when there is more, you should speak at greater length; for necessity itself teaches this without anyone's prompting.

But this plainly must not be passed over: if someone comes to you to be catechized who has been cultivated in liberal studies, who has already decided to be a Christian and has come for this reason, to become one, it is quite unlikely that he has not learned much of our Scriptures and literature, and, already instructed by these, has come only to share in the sacraments. For such people usually inquire carefully into everything, not at the very hour when they become Christians, but beforehand, and communicate and discuss the movements of their mind with whomever they can. With these, then, one must deal briefly, not tiresomely driving home what they know but touching on it modestly; so that we say we believe that they already know this and that, and in this way run quickly through everything that has to be driven home to the uninstructed and unlearned; so that if this educated man knows something, he does not hear it as from a teacher, and if he is still ignorant of something, he learns it while we are recalling what we believe him already to know. It is certainly not useless to ask him too what moved him to wish to become a Christian; so that if you see that he has been persuaded by books, whether canonical ones or those of useful writers, you may say something about these at the beginning, praising them according to the different merits of canonical authority and of the most skilful diligence of the expositors; and above all commending in the canonical Scriptures their most wholesome humility, joined to an admirable loftiness, and in the others, according to each writer's ability, a style of more sonorous and, as it were, more polished eloquence, suited to prouder and therefore weaker minds. Certainly he should also be drawn out to indicate whom he has chiefly read and with which books he has been most familiar, from which he was persuaded to wish to join the Church. When he has told us, then, if those books are known to us, or at least we have heard by the Church's report that they were written by some notable catholic man, let us approve them gladly. But if he has come upon the volumes of some heretic and, perhaps not knowing what the true faith rejects, has held it in his mind and thinks it catholic, he must be carefully taught, with the authority of the universal Church set before him, and that of other most learned men who are distinguished for their disputations and writings in its truth. And yet even those who departed this life as catholics and left some Christian writings to posterity, in certain passages of their works, either through not being understood, or, such is human weakness, because they were less able with the keenness of their minds to penetrate more hidden things, and strayed from the truth by its likeness, have given occasion to presumptuous and bold men for contriving and giving birth to some heresy. This is not surprising, since even from the canonical Letters themselves, where everything has been said most soundly, many have brought forth many harmful doctrines, cutting the unity of communion; not, indeed, by taking certain things otherwise than either the writer meant or the truth itself is (for if that were all, who would not gladly pardon human weakness when it is ready to be corrected?), but by defending with the bitterest animosity and stubborn arrogance what they had perversely and wrongly supposed. All these things are to be handled in modest conference with one who comes to the fellowship of the Christian people not as an ignorant person, as they say, but polished and cultivated by the books of the learned; assuming only so much authority in instructing him, that he may beware of the errors of presumption, as the humility that brought him is already felt to allow. As for the rest, according to the rules of saving doctrine, whatever is to be narrated or discussed, whether concerning faith or morals or temptations, running through it in the manner I have described, everything is to be referred to that more excellent way.