Letters 55.3–55.23

This passage is accomplished by us now through faith, which is ours for the forgiveness of sins, in the hope of eternal life, as we love God and our neighbour; because faith works through love, and the righteous lives by faith; but hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. According to this faith, hope, and love, by which we have begun to be under grace, we have already died with Christ and been buried with him through baptism, as the apostle says: 'For our old man was crucified together with him'; and we have risen with him, because he has raised us up together and made us sit together in the heavenly places. Hence also that exhortation: 'Set your mind on the things above, not on the things on earth.' But since he goes on to say, 'For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God; when Christ your life appears, then you too will appear with him in glory,' he shows clearly enough what he wishes to be understood: that our passage from death to life now, which is made by faith, is carried out in the hope of the resurrection and glory to come at the end, when this corruptible, that is, this flesh in which we now groan, puts on incorruption, and this mortal puts on immortality. For now we have indeed through faith the firstfruits of the Spirit, but we still groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body; for in hope we have been saved. While we are in this hope, the body is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness. But see what follows: 'If the Spirit of him who raised Christ from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit dwelling in you.' This, then, is what the whole church, found in the pilgrimage of mortality, waits for at the end of the age: what was shown beforehand in the body of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the firstborn from the dead; because his body too, of which he himself is the head, is nothing other than the church.

For some, attending to the words which the apostle constantly uses, that we have died with Christ and risen with him, and not understanding in what sense they are said, thought that the resurrection had already taken place and that none was to be hoped for later at the end of time. 'Among them,' he says, 'are Hymenaeus and Philetus, who have swerved from the truth, saying that the resurrection has already taken place, and are overturning the faith of some.' The same apostle rebukes and denounces them, though he says that we have risen with Christ. Why, except that he says this has happened in us through faith, hope, and love, according to the firstfruits of the Spirit? But since hope that is seen is not hope, and therefore, if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience, there certainly remains the redemption of our body, waiting for which we groan within ourselves. Hence that saying: 'Rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation.'

This renewal of our life, then, is a certain passage from death to life, which is made first through faith, so that we rejoice in hope and are patient in tribulation, while our outer man is still decaying, but the inner man is being renewed day by day. Because of this very beginning of new life, because of the new man whom we are commanded to put on, putting off the old, purging out the old leaven so that we may be a new lump, since Christ our Passover has been sacrificed: because of this newness of life, then, the first month among the months of the year has been assigned to this celebration. For it is also called the month of new things. And since in the whole course of the age a third time has now appeared, therefore the Lord's resurrection is on the third day. For the first time is before the law, the second under the law, the third under grace, in which there is now the manifestation of the sacrament formerly hidden in prophetic riddle. This, then, is also signified in the number of the moon; for since the number seven usually appears in the Scriptures as mystical, pointing to a certain perfection, Easter is celebrated in the third week of the moon, that is, on the day that falls between the fourteenth and the twenty-first.

There is another sacrament there too; and if it is obscure to you, because you are less learned in such inquiries, do not be saddened, nor think me better on that account, because I learned these things in my boyhood studies; for let him who boasts boast in this, that he knows and understands that I am the Lord. Some students of such matters, then, have inquired much about the numbers and motions of the stars, and those who have examined these things more subtly have inferred the waxing and waning of the moon from the turning of its globe; not that any substance is added to it when it increases or taken away when it decreases, as the Manichees, holding this out of mad ignorance, have said that it is filled, as a ship is filled, from the fugitive part of God, which they do not hesitate to believe and declare, with sacrilegious heart and mouth, to be mixed with the princes of darkness and defiled by their filth. So they say that the moon is filled when that same part of God, purged from defilement by great labours, fleeing from the whole world and from all the sewers, is returned to God, who mourns until it returns; and that it is filled during half a month and in the other half poured out into the sun as into another ship. Yet amid these blasphemies, which are to be anathematized, they have never been able to invent any reason why, either when beginning to shine or when ceasing, it gleams with a horned light, or why it begins to diminish from the middle of the month and does not arrive full at the pouring out.

But those who have investigated these things by sure numbers, so that they predicted long beforehand not only why eclipses of the sun and moon happened but also when they would occur, and fixed them at determined intervals of time by regular calculation and committed them to writing, so that those who now read and understand those writings predict them no less, and they happen neither otherwise nor at other times than they predict; such men, who are not to be pardoned, as holy Scripture says, because, though they had so much power that they could assess the world, they did not more easily find its Lord, whom they could have found by humble piety: from the very horns of the moon, which are turned away from the sun whether it is waxing or waning, they inferred either that it is illuminated by the sun, and the farther it moves away from it, the more it receives its rays on the side visible to the earth; and the nearer it approaches it after the middle of the month from the other semicircle, the more, being illuminated on its upper side, it cannot receive the rays on the side it turns toward the earth, and so seems to wane; or else, if it has its own light, that it has it on one half of its sphere, and as it moves away from the sun it gradually shows that part to the earth, until it shows the whole, as if displaying increase, while what was lacking is not added, but what was there is revealed; and again gradually hides what was visible, and so seems to wane. But whichever of these two is true, this at least is plain and easily known to anyone who pays attention: that the moon does not increase to our eyes except by moving away from the sun, nor decrease except by approaching the sun on its other side.

Now consider what we read in Proverbs: 'The wise man remains like the sun, but the fool changes like the moon.' And who is the wise man who remains, but that Sun of righteousness of whom it is said, 'The sun of righteousness has risen for me,' and of whom the ungodly, lamenting on the last day that he did not rise for them, will say, 'And the light of righteousness did not shine on us, and the sun did not rise for us'? For this sun, visible to the eyes of the flesh, God makes to rise on the good and the bad, who also sends rain on the just and the unjust. Fitting comparisons are always drawn from visible things to invisible. Who, then, is that fool who changes like the moon, but Adam, in whom all sinned? For the human soul, withdrawing from the Sun of righteousness, that is, from that inner contemplation of unchangeable truth, turns all its powers to earthly things and is darkened more and more in its inner and higher parts; but when it begins to return to that unchangeable wisdom, the nearer it approaches it with the affection of piety, the more the outer man decays but the inner man is renewed day by day, and all that light of the mind which was inclined to lower things is turned to higher things and is in a way withdrawn from earthly things, so that it dies more and more to this world and its life is hidden with Christ in God.

It changes for the worse, then, when it goes out to outward things and casts away its inmost parts in its life; and this seems better to the earth, that is, to those whose minds are on earthly things, when the sinner is praised in the desires of his soul and he who does wickedly is blessed. But it changes for the better when it gradually turns its attention and glory away from earthly things that appear in this world and turns them to higher and inner things; and this seems worse to the earth, that is, to those whose minds are on earthly things. Hence those ungodly men, doing at last a fruitless repentance, will say among many things: 'These are they whom we once held in derision and as a byword of reproach; we fools thought their life madness.' And so the Holy Spirit, drawing a likeness from visible to invisible things and from bodily to spiritual sacraments, willed that the passage from one life to another, which is called pascha, should be observed from the fourteenth moon: so that the likeness should be taken from the moon not only because of the third time I mentioned above, since the third week begins there, but also because of that very turning from outward to inward things; and up to the twenty-first because of the number seven itself, by which the totality is often figured, and which is also attributed to the church itself as an image of totality.

That is why the apostle John in the Apocalypse writes to seven churches. And the church, still placed in this mortality of the flesh, is signified in the Scriptures by the name of the moon because of that very changeableness. Hence that saying: 'They have made ready their arrows in the quiver, to shoot in the dark moon at the upright in heart.' For before what the apostle says comes to pass, 'When Christ your life appears, then you too will appear with him in glory,' the church seems dark in the time of her pilgrimage, groaning among many iniquities; and then the snares of deceitful seducers are to be feared, which he wished to be understood by the name of arrows. Hence in another place, because of the most faithful messengers of truth whom the church brings forth everywhere, it is said: 'The moon, a faithful witness in heaven.' And when the psalm sang of the Lord's kingdom, it said: 'In his days righteousness shall arise, and abundance of peace, until the moon is taken away'; that is, the abundance of peace will grow until it consumes all the changeableness of mortality. Then the last enemy, death, will be destroyed, and whatever resists us from the weakness of the flesh, by reason of which we do not yet have perfect peace, will be wholly consumed, when this corruptible puts on incorruption and this mortal puts on immortality. Hence the walls of that city called Jericho, which in the Hebrew language is said to mean 'moon', fell when the ark of the covenant was carried round the seventh time. For what does the proclamation of the kingdom of heaven, which the carrying round of the ark signified, do now, except that all the defences of mortal life, that is, all hope of this world which resists the hope of the world to come, should be destroyed by the sevenfold gift of the Holy Spirit through free choice? For this reason, as the ark went round, those walls fell not by violent force but of their own accord. There are other testimonies of the Scriptures too which suggest to us, by mentioning the moon, the meaning of the church, which in this mortality is a pilgrim in hardships and labours away from that Jerusalem whose citizens are the holy angels.

Yet fools who do not wish to be changed for the better should not think on that account that these luminaries are to be worshipped, because a likeness is sometimes drawn from them to figure divine mysteries; for it is drawn from every creature. Nor should we on that account rush into the sentence of condemnation pronounced by the apostle's mouth on certain people who worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. For just as we do not worship cattle, although he has been called both lamb and calf, nor a wild beast, because he has been called the lion of the tribe of Judah, nor stones, because the rock was Christ, nor Mount Zion, because the church is figured in it, so neither do we worship the sun or the moon, although from that heavenly creation, as from much of the earthly, figures of the sacraments are taken for mystical instruction.

Therefore the ravings of the Manichees are to be laughed at with detestation. When we charge them with the empty fictions by which they hurl men headlong into the error into which they were first hurled themselves, they think themselves clever when they say to us: 'Why do you too celebrate Easter by the reckoning of the sun and the moon?' As if we found fault with the orders of the stars or the changes of the seasons, created by the supreme and good God, and not with their perversity, which abuses things most wisely created for the emptiest opinions of their folly. For if an astrologer is going to object to our drawing likenesses from the stars and lights of heaven to figure the sacraments mystically, let the augurs object too, so that it may not be said to us, 'Be simple as doves'; let the Marsi object too, so that it may not be said to us, 'Wise as serpents'; let the actors object, so that we may not name the harp in the psalms. Or else, because signs of likenesses are taken from these things for the mysteries of the word of God, let them say, if they please, that we are seeking auspices, or brewing poisons, or affecting theatrical luxuries, which is the height of madness to say.

We do not, then, infer from the sun and the moon, at yearly or monthly times, the outcomes of our actions, lest in the most dangerous storms of human life we should be dashed as on the rocks of a wretched slavery and make shipwreck of free choice. But we receive with most religious devotion likenesses taken from them for signifying a sacred thing, as from the rest of creation: from winds, sea, earth, birds, fish, cattle, trees, men; in speech, indeed, in many ways, but in the celebration of the sacraments, with Christian freedom, very sparingly, as from water, grain, wine, and oil. But in the servitude of the old people many things were commanded even to be celebrated which are handed down to us only to be understood. So we do not observe days and years and months and seasons, lest we hear from the apostle: 'I fear for you, lest perhaps I have laboured among you in vain.' For he blames those who say: 'I will not set out, because it is an unlucky day,' or 'because the moon is in such a position'; or 'I will set out, so that things may go well, because the position of the stars is such'; 'I will not do business this month, because that star governs my month,' or 'I will, because it takes up the month'; 'I will not plant a vineyard this year, because it is leap year.' But no wise man thinks that those observers of times are to be blamed who say, 'I will not set out today, because a storm has arisen,' or 'I will not sail, because the remains of winter are still here,' or 'It is time to sow, because the earth has been soaked by the autumn rains'; or any other natural effects that have been observed concerning the motions of air and moisture in varying the qualities of the seasons in the most orderly revolution of the stars, of which it was said when they were created: 'And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years.' But if figures of likenesses are drawn not only from heaven and the stars but also from lower creation for the dispensation of the sacraments, it is a kind of eloquence of saving doctrine, adapted to moving the affection of learners from visible to invisible things, from bodily to spiritual, from temporal to eternal.

Nor does any of us pay attention to the fact that at the time when we celebrate Easter the sun is in the Ram, as they call a certain region of the stars, where indeed the sun is found in the month of new things. But whether they choose to call that same part of the sky the Ram or something else, we have learned from the holy Scriptures that God created all the stars and set them in order in the heavenly places he wished. However they divide the stars, marked out and ordered, into whatever parts, and by whatever names they designate them, wherever the sun was in the month of new things, there this celebration would find it, because of the likeness to the sacrament of renewing life, about which we have said enough. And if that region of the stars could be called the Ram because of some figure and correspondence, the divine word would not be afraid to draw some likeness of a sacrament from it, just as it has drawn mystical likenesses for conveying things figuratively from other creatures, not only heavenly but also earthly: as from Orion or the Pleiades, from Mount Sinai, from Mount Zion, from the rivers called Gihon, Pishon, Tigris, Euphrates, from the river Jordan itself, so often made famous in the holy mysteries.

But who does not understand how great a difference there is between observations of the stars adapted to the qualities of the weather, as farmers or sailors observe them, or to marking the regions of the world and directing one's course to or from somewhere, as ship's pilots do and those who travel through sandy deserts into the interior of the south by no fixed path, or for signifying something figuratively in useful teaching, if some mention of certain stars is made; how great a difference, I say, between these useful purposes and the vanities of men who observe the stars in order to search out neither the qualities of the weather, nor the routes of regions, nor merely the numbers of the seasons, nor likenesses of spiritual things, but as it were the fated outcomes of events?

But now let us see next why, when we celebrate Easter, care is also taken that the sabbath should fall within it; for this is peculiar to the Christian religion, since the Jews observe only the month of new things and the moon from the fourteenth to the twenty-first. But because their Passover, at which the Lord suffered, fell in such a way that the sabbath day was between his death and his resurrection, our fathers judged that this should be added, both so that our festival might be distinguished from the festival of the Jews, and so that what we must believe was not done without purpose by him who is before times, through whom times were made, who came in the fullness of time, and who had power to lay down his life and take it up again, and who therefore waited for an hour not fated but suited to the sacrament he had resolved to commend, saying, 'My hour has not yet come', might be kept by later generations in the yearly celebration of his passion.

For the goal towards which, as I said above, we now journey by faith and hope, and to reach which we strive through love, is a certain rest from all labour of all troubles, holy and everlasting. Into it a passage is made for us out of this life, which our Lord Jesus Christ deigned to show beforehand and consecrate by his passion. In that rest there is no slothful idleness, but a certain ineffable tranquillity of leisured activity. For at the end one rests from the works of this life in such a way as to rejoice in the activity of the other life. But since such activity is carried on in the praise of God without labour of the limbs and without the anguish of cares, one does not pass to it through rest in such a way that labour succeeds rest, that is, activity does not begin in such a way that rest ceases; for there is no return to labours and cares, but what belongs to rest remains in the activity: neither toiling in work nor wavering in thought. Since, then, through rest there is a return to the first life, from which the soul fell into sin, rest is therefore signified by the sabbath. But that first life, which is restored to those returning from pilgrimage and receiving the first robe, is figured by the first day of the week, which we call the Lord's day. Look for the seven days; read Genesis: you will find the seventh without an evening, because it signifies rest without end. So the first life was not everlasting for the sinner, but the final rest is everlasting; and therefore the eighth day too will have everlasting blessedness, because that rest which is everlasting is taken up by the eighth, not extinguished; for otherwise it would not be everlasting. So the eighth will be the same as the first, so that the first life may be restored, but eternal.

The sabbath, however, was commended to the former people to be celebrated bodily by rest from work, so that it might be a figure of sanctification in the rest of the Holy Spirit. For we never read in Genesis of sanctification through all the earlier days, but of the sabbath alone it was said: 'And God sanctified the seventh day.' For souls love rest, whether godly or wicked; but most of them do not know how to reach what they love. Even bodies by their weights seek nothing but what souls seek by their loves. For just as a body strives by its weight, whether downward or upward, until, coming to the place towards which it strives, it comes to rest (for the weight of oil, if released in air, strives downward, but if under water, upward), so souls strive towards the things they love, in order to rest by reaching them. And many things delight through the body, but in them there is no eternal rest, nor even a lasting one; and therefore they rather defile and weigh down the soul, so as to hinder its pure weight, by which it is borne to things above. But when the soul delights in itself, it does not yet delight in an unchangeable thing, and so it is still proud, because it holds itself to be supreme, whereas God is higher. Nor is it left unpunished in such a sin, because God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. But when it delights in God, there it finds true, sure, eternal rest, which it was seeking in other things and not finding. Hence it is admonished in the psalm: 'Delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.'

Since, then, the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us, sanctification is mentioned on the seventh day, where rest is commended. But since we cannot work well unless helped by his gift, as the apostle says, 'For it is God who works in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure', nor shall we be able to rest after all the good works we do in this life unless sanctified and perfected for eternity by his gift, therefore it is said of God himself that, when he had made all things very good, he rested on the seventh day from all his works which he had made. For it signified the future rest which he was to give to men after good works. For just as, when we work well, he is said to work in us, by whose gift we work well, so, when we rest, he is said to rest, by whose gift we rest.

Hence it is that among the first three commandments of the Decalogue, which concern God (for the other seven concern the neighbour, that is, man, since the whole law hangs on two commandments), the third concerns the observance of the sabbath. So in the first commandment we understand the Father, where the worship of any likeness of God in human fabrications is forbidden; not because God has no image, but because no image of him ought to be worshipped except that which is what he himself is, and not even that in his place, but with him. And because the creature is changeable, and therefore it is said, 'Every creature has been subjected to vanity', since the nature of the whole is shown even in a part, another commandment follows, lest anyone should think the Son of God, the Word through whom all things were made, to be a creature: 'You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.' And the Holy Spirit, in whom that rest is granted to us which we love everywhere but find only by loving God, when his love is poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us (since God sanctified the seventh day, on which he rested), is suggested in the third commandment of the law, which is written about the observance of the sabbath; not so that we should think we rest already in this life, but so that all the good we do may have no aim but the future everlasting rest. For remember above all what I have already mentioned above, that in hope we have been saved; but hope that is seen is not hope.

All those things which are conveyed to us figuratively serve to nourish and, as it were, fan the very fire of love by which, as by a weight, we are carried upward or inward to rest; for they move and kindle love more than if they were set out bare, without any likenesses of sacraments. The reason for this is hard to state; yet it is so, that something intimated through allegorical meaning moves more, delights more, and is more honoured than if it were said most plainly in literal words. I believe that the soul's movement, as long as it is still entangled in earthly things, is kindled rather sluggishly; but if it is carried to bodily likenesses and from there brought back to the spiritual things figured by those likenesses, it is quickened by the very passage, and is kindled like a flame stirred in a torch, and is carried away to rest with more ardent love.

And so, among all those ten commandments, only the one about the sabbath is commanded to be observed figuratively; and we have taken up that figure to be understood, not also to be celebrated by bodily rest. For since the sabbath signifies spiritual rest, of which it is said in the psalm, 'Be still and see that I am the Lord', and to which men are called by the Lord himself, saying, 'Come to me, all who labour and are burdened, and I will refresh you; take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls', we nevertheless observe the other commandments there literally, as commandments, without any figurative meaning. For we have plainly learned not to worship idols, not to take the name of the Lord our God in vain, to honour father and mother, not to commit adultery, not to kill, not to steal, not to bear false witness, not to covet our neighbour's wife, not to covet anything of our neighbour's; these do not figuratively put forward one thing and mystically signify another, but are observed as they sound. But we are not commanded to observe the sabbath day according to the letter, by rest from bodily work, as the Jews observe it; and their observance itself, because it is so commanded, is judged ridiculous unless it signifies some other, spiritual rest. Hence we understand, not unfittingly, that all the things said figuratively in the Scriptures serve to arouse the love by which we tend towards rest, since only that commandment in the Decalogue is given figuratively in which rest is commended, which is loved everywhere but is found holy and sure in God alone.

The Lord's day, however, was made known not to the Jews but to Christians by the resurrection of the Lord, and from that it began to have its festival. For the souls of all the saints, before the resurrection of the body, are indeed at rest, but they are not in that activity by which bodies, once recovered, are quickened. Such activity is signified by the eighth day, which is also the first, because it does not take away that rest but glorifies it. For the difficulty arising from the body does not return with the body, since neither does corruption: 'For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal put on immortality.' Therefore, before the Lord's resurrection, although the sacrament of the eighth day, by which the resurrection was signified, was by no means hidden from the holy fathers, full of the prophetic spirit (for a psalm is written 'for the eighth', infants were circumcised on the eighth day, and in Ecclesiastes it is said, signifying the two testaments, 'To those seven and to those eight'), it was nevertheless reserved and hidden, and only the sabbath was handed down to be celebrated; because previously there was the rest of the dead, but no one's resurrection who, rising from the dead, would not die, and over whom death would have no more dominion. So, after such a resurrection had taken place in the Lord's body, so that what the body of the church hoped for at the end might go before in the head of the church, the Lord's day, that is, the eighth, which is also the first, might begin to be celebrated. The same reason is understood why, in the observance of the Passover, in which they were commanded to kill and eat a lamb, though it most plainly prefigured the Lord's passion, they were not commanded to see that the sabbath should fall within it and coincide with the third week of the moon in the month of new things: so that the Lord might rather mark that same day by his passion, who had come also to make known the Lord's day, that is, the eighth, which is also the first.