Sermons to the People 112.1–113.5

The holy readings have been set before us, both for us to hear and for us, with the Lord’s help, to bring forth some word about them. In the apostolic reading thanks are given to the Lord for the faith of the Gentiles, surely because he himself brought it about. In the Psalm we said: “God of hosts, turn us, and show your face, and we shall be saved.” In the Gospel we were called to a supper: or rather, others were called; we were not called but led; not only led, but even compelled. For so we heard: “A certain man made a great supper.” Who is this man, if not “the mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus”? He sent so that those invited might come, because the hour had now come for them to come. Who are the invited, if not those called through the prophets sent beforehand? When? Long ago, ever since prophets were sent, they invite to Christ’s supper. So they were sent to the people of Israel. Often they were sent, often they called them to come at the hour of the supper. But they received those who invited them, and refused the supper. What does it mean, they received those who invited and refused the supper? They read the prophets, and killed Christ. But when they killed him, they unknowingly prepared a supper for us. When the supper was ready, Christ sacrificed, after Christ’s resurrection, the supper of the Lord which the faithful know having been commended and established by his hands and mouth, the apostles were sent to those to whom the prophets had been sent before: “Come to the supper.”

Those who would not come made excuses. And how did they excuse themselves? There were three excuses. One said, “I have bought a farm; I am going to see it: have me excused.” Another said, “I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to test them: I beg you, have me excused.” The third said, “I have married a wife; have me excused: I cannot come.” Do we not think these are the excuses that hinder all people who decline to come to this supper? Let us look for them, examine them, find them: but so as to beware of them. In the farm bought, lordship is marked: so pride is rebuked. For to have a farm, to hold it, to possess it, to subject people to oneself in it, to be lord, is delightful. An evil vice, the first vice. For the first man wanted to be lord, who did not want to have a lord. What is it to be lord, but to rejoice in one’s own power? There is a greater power: let us be subject to it, so that we may be safe. “I have bought a farm; have me excused.” Pride found, he would not come.

Another said, “I have bought five yoke of oxen.” Would it not be enough to say, “I have bought oxen”? Beyond doubt there is something that by its obscurity calls us to seek and understand; and because it is closed, it urges us to knock. The five yoke of oxen are the senses of this flesh. The senses of this flesh are counted as five, as everyone knows; and those who perhaps have not noticed recognize it without doubt when reminded. So the senses of this flesh are found to be five. Sight is in the eyes, hearing in the ears, smell in the nostrils, taste in the throat, touch in all the members. White and black and colored in any way, bright and dark, we perceive by seeing. Harsh and melodious we perceive by hearing. Sweet-smelling and foul-smelling we perceive by smelling. Sweet and bitter we perceive by tasting. Hard and soft, smooth and rough, hot and cold, heavy and light, we perceive by touching. They are five, and they are yokes. But that they are yokes appears more easily in the first three senses. There are two eyes, two ears, twin nostrils: see three yokes. In the throat, that is, in the sense of taste, a certain doubling is found, because nothing is tasted unless it touches the tongue and the palate. The pleasure of the flesh which belongs to touch is doubled more hiddenly. For it is both outside and inside. So it too is double. Why are they called yokes of oxen? Because through these senses of the flesh earthly things are sought. For oxen turn the earth. But there are people far from faith, given over to earthly things, occupied with fleshly things: they will believe nothing except what they reach by the fivefold sense of their body. In these five senses they set themselves the rules of their whole will. “I do not believe,” he says, “except what I see. See what I know, see what I am sure of. It is white, it is black, it is round, it is square, it is colored this way or that: I know it, I perceive it, I hold it; nature itself teaches me. I am not compelled to believe what you cannot show me. It is a voice: I perceive that it is a voice; it sings well, it sings badly, it is sweet, it is harsh: I know it, I am sure, it reaches me. It smells good, it smells bad: I know it, I perceive it. This is sweet, this is bitter; this is salty, this is tasteless. What more you may tell me, I do not know. By touch I know what is hard, what is soft; what is smooth, what is rough; what is hot, what is cold. What more are you going to show me?” Our apostle Thomas was held by such a hindrance, who about the Lord Christ, that is, about Christ’s resurrection, would not believe even his eyes alone. “Unless I put my fingers,” he says, “into the places of the nails and wounds, and unless I put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” And the Lord, who could have risen without any trace of a wound, kept the scars, to be touched by the doubter, and so that the wounds of the heart might be healed. And yet, about to call to the supper against the excuse of the five yoke of oxen, he says: “Blessed are those who do not see, and believe.” We, my brothers, called to the supper, are not hindered by these five yokes. For we have not longed in this time to see the face of the Lord’s flesh, nor desired to take into our ears the voice coming from the mouth of that flesh: we have sought no temporal odor in him. A certain woman poured most precious ointment on him, and the house was filled with the fragrance; but we were not there; see, we did not smell it, and we believe. He gave his disciples the supper consecrated by his hands; but we did not recline at that banquet; and yet we eat that very supper by faith every day. And do not think it a great thing to have been present without faith at that supper which he gave with his own hands: faith afterward proved better than faithlessness then. Paul, who believed, was not there; Judas, who betrayed, was there. How many even now at that same supper (although they did not see that table then, nor see with their eyes or taste with their throats the bread which the Lord carried in his hands; yet, because it is the same supper that is now prepared), how many even now eat and drink judgment to themselves at that same supper?

But from where, so to speak, did the occasion arise for the Lord to speak of this supper? One of those reclining (for he was at a banquet to which he had been invited) had said: “Blessed are those who eat bread in the kingdom of God.” He was sighing as if for something far off, and the bread itself was reclining before him. What is the bread of the kingdom of God, but he who says, “I am the living bread who came down from heaven”? Do not prepare your throat, but your heart. That is how this supper was commended. See, we believe in Christ when we receive with faith. In receiving we know what we are to think. We receive a little, and are fattened in the heart. So it is not what is seen, but what is believed, that feeds. So neither have we sought that outward sense; nor have we said, “Let those believe who saw with their eyes and handled with their hands the Lord himself rising, if what is said is true: we do not touch him; why should we believe?” If we thought such things, we would be kept from the supper by those five yoke of oxen. So that you may know, brothers, that what was marked in these five senses was not the delight which charms and brings pleasure, but a certain curiosity, he did not say, “I have bought five yoke of oxen and am going to feed them,” but, “and am going to test them.” Whoever wants to test does not want to doubt through the yokes of oxen, as holy Thomas did not want to doubt through the yokes. “Let me see, let me touch, let me put in my fingers.” “See,” he says, “put your fingers into my side, and do not be unbelieving. I was killed for you: through the place you want to touch I shed blood to redeem you; and do you still doubt me unless you touch me? See, I offer this too; see, I show this too: touch, and believe; find the place of the wound, heal the wound of doubt.”

The third said, “I have married a wife.” This is the pleasure of the flesh, which hinders many: would that it were outside, and not inside! There are people who say: “It is not well with a man unless he has the delights of the flesh.” They are the ones whom the apostle notes, saying: “Let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we die.” “Who has risen from there? Who has told us what goes on there? This we take with us: what is good for us in this time.” Whoever says this has married a wife, embraces the flesh, delights in the pleasures of the flesh, is excused from the supper: let him take care that he does not die of inner hunger. Attend to John, the holy apostle and evangelist: “Do not love the world, or the things in the world.” O you who come to the Lord’s supper, “do not love the world, or the things in the world.” He did not say, “Do not have”; but, “Do not love.” You have had, you have possessed, you have loved. The love of earthly things is birdlime on spiritual wings. See, you have desired; you have stuck fast. “Who will give you wings like a dove’s?” When will you fly where you may truly rest? When here, where you have wrongly stuck fast, you wished perversely to rest. “Do not love the world”: it is the divine trumpet. At once, in the words of this trumpet, it is said to the whole earth and the whole world, “Do not love the world, or the things in the world. Whoever loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world is the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the ambition of the age.” He began from the bottom, where the Gospel ended. He began there where the Gospel put the end. The lust of the flesh: “I have married a wife.” The lust of the eyes: “I have bought five yoke of oxen.” The ambition of the age: “I have bought a farm.”

And these senses are mentioned, the whole by a part, through the eyes alone, because among the five senses the eyes have the primacy. That is why, although sight belongs properly to the eyes, we are accustomed to speak of “seeing” through all five senses. How? First, what belongs to the eyes themselves: you say, “See how white it is; I look and see how white it is”: this belongs to the eyes. “Listen and see how melodious it is.” Can you say conversely, “Listen and hear how white it is”? This word “see” runs through all the senses; but the property of the other senses does not run back through it. “Attend and see how melodious it is; smell and see how sweet it is; taste and see how sweet it is; touch and see how soft it is.” Surely, since they are senses, we should rather say: “Listen and sense how melodious it is; smell and sense how sweet it is; taste and sense how sweet it is; touch and sense how hot it is; feel and sense how smooth it is; feel and sense how soft it is.” We say none of these. For the Lord himself, when after the resurrection he appeared to his disciples, and when, seeing him, they still wavered in faith, thinking they saw a spirit, said: “Why are you troubled? And why do thoughts arise in your heart? See my hands and my feet.” And “see” is not enough: “Touch,” he says, “and handle, and see.” Look and see, handle and see: see in the eyes alone, see in all the senses. Because he was seeking the inner sense of faith, he lent himself to the outer senses of the body. We have taken nothing from these outer senses in the Lord: we have heard with our hearing, believed with our heart; and that hearing itself not from his mouth, but from the mouth of his preachers, from the mouth of those who were already at supper and, belching from it, were inviting us.

So let us put away vain and evil excuses, and come to the supper, by which we may be fattened within. Let not the arrogance of pride hinder us, let it not lift us up; or let unlawful curiosity not frighten us and turn us away from God; let not the pleasure of the flesh hinder us from the pleasure of the heart. Let us come and be fattened. And who came, but beggars, the weak, the lame, the blind? But there did not come the rich, the healthy, those who as it were walk well and see sharply, who presume much on themselves, and so are the more hopeless the prouder they are. Let the beggars come, because he invites who for our sakes became poor, though he was rich, so that by his poverty we beggars might be made rich. Let the weak come: because “it is not the healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick.” Let the lame come, who say to him: “Order my steps in your paths.” Let the blind come, who say: “Enlighten my eyes, lest I ever sleep in death.” Such people came at the hour, those first invited having been rejected by their own excuse: they came at the hour, they came in from the streets and lanes of the city. And the servant who had been sent answered: “Lord, it is done as you commanded, and there is still room.” “Go out,” he says, “into the roads and hedges, and whomever you find, compel them to come in.” Whomever you find, do not wait for them to be willing: compel them to come in. “I have prepared a great supper, a great house; I do not allow a place to be empty there.” The Gentiles came from the streets and lanes: let the heretics come from the hedges; here they will find peace. For those who build hedges seek divisions. Let them be drawn from the hedges, plucked out from the thorns. They have stuck in the hedges; they do not want to be compelled. “Let us come in,” they say, “by our own will.” This is not what the Lord commanded: “Compel them,” he says, “to come in.” Let necessity be found outside; will is born within.

What we are reminded of, we ought to remind you of. The recent Gospel reading reminded us to make friends by means of the mammon of iniquity, so that they too may receive those who do so into eternal dwellings. Who are those who will have eternal dwellings, if not the saints of God? And who are those to be received by them into eternal dwellings, if not those who serve their need and cheerfully supply what they require? Let us remember, then, that at the last judgment the Lord will say to those who stand at his right hand: “I was hungry, and you gave me food,” and the rest that you know. And when they asked when they had done him these services, he answered: “When you did it to one of the least of mine, you did it to me.” These least ones are those who receive into eternal dwellings. He said this to those on the right because they did it; he said it to those on the left because they would not do it. But those on the right who did it, what did they receive, or rather, what will they receive? “Come,” he says, “blessed of my Father, possess the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave me food. When you did it to one of the least of mine, you did it to me.” Who, then, are Christ’s least ones? They are those who have left all they had and followed him, and distributed whatever they had to the poor, so as to serve God unencumbered, without worldly fetters, and, freed from the burdens of the world, lift up their shoulders as if winged. These are the least. Why least? Because humble, because not lifted up, not proud. Weigh these least ones, and you will find a heavy weight. But what does it mean that he says they are friends made by means of the mammon of iniquity? What is the mammon of iniquity? First, what is mammon? It is a word that is not Latin. It is a Hebrew word, related to the Punic language. For these languages are associated by a certain nearness of meaning. What the Punic speakers call mammon is called in Latin lucrum, “gain.” What the Hebrews call mammona is called in Latin divitiae, “riches.” To say it all in Latin, then, our Lord Jesus Christ said this: “Make friends for yourselves by means of the riches of iniquity.” Some, understanding this wrongly, seize what belongs to others and give some of it to the poor, and think they are doing what was commanded. For they say: “To seize what belongs to others is the mammon of iniquity; to pay out something from it, especially to needy saints, is to make friends by means of the mammon of iniquity.” This understanding must be corrected; rather, it must be wholly wiped from the tablets of your heart. I do not want you to understand it so. Give alms from honest labor: give from what you have rightly. For you are not going to bribe Christ the judge, so that he does not hear you together with the poor from whom you take. For if you robbed some weak person, you being stronger and more powerful, and he came with you before some judge on this earth who had some power of judging, and wanted to plead his case against you; if you gave the judge something from that plunder and robbery of the needy man so that he would judge in your favor, would that judge please even you? Of course he judged for you, and yet so great is the force of justice that he displeases even you. Do not paint yourself such a God; do not set up such an idol in the temple of your heart. Your God is not such as you yourself ought not to be. If you do not judge so but judge justly, even so your God is better than you: he is not inferior; he is more just; he is the fountain of justice. Whatever good you have done, you drew from there; and whatever good you have belched out, you drank from there. Do you praise the vessel because it has something from there, and find fault with the fountain? Do not want to give alms from interest and usury. I say this to the faithful, to those to whom we dispense the body of Christ. Fear; correct yourselves: lest I say later, “You do it, and you do it.” And I think that if I do, you ought not to be angry with me, but with yourselves, so as to be corrected. For this is the use of what is said in the Psalm: “Be angry, and do not sin.” I want you to be angry, but so as not to sin. And so as not to sin, with whom should you be angry but yourselves? For what is a penitent man but a man angry with himself? To receive pardon, he exacts punishment from himself; and he rightly says to God: “Turn away your eyes from my sins, for I acknowledge my sin.” If you acknowledge, he pardons. You who were doing it, do not do it: it is not allowed.

But if you have already done it, and you have such money, and have filled your purses with it, and were storing up treasure from it: what you have is from evil; do not now add evil to it, and make friends for yourselves by means of the mammon of iniquity. Did Zacchaeus have his wealth from good? Read and see. He was chief of the tax collectors, that is, the one to whom the public taxes were brought: from this he had his riches. He had oppressed many, taken from many, amassed much. Christ entered his house, and salvation came upon his house: for so the Lord himself says, “Today salvation has come to this house.” But see that salvation. First he wanted to see the Lord, because he was short in stature; but as the crowd was in the way, he climbed a sycamore tree and saw him passing. And the Lord looked at him and said: “Zacchaeus, come down; I must stay at your house.” You are hanging, but I do not keep you hanging, that is, I do not put you off. You wanted to see me passing by; today you will find me staying with you. The Lord went in to him; filled with joy, he said, “Half of my goods I give to the poor.” See how he runs who runs to make friends by means of the mammon of iniquity. And lest he be held guilty on some other count: “If I have taken anything from anyone,” he said, “I will restore it fourfold.” He inflicted a sentence on himself, so as not to incur condemnation. So you who have it from evil, make good from it. You who do not have it from evil, do not acquire it from evil. Be good, you who make good from evil: and when you begin to make some good from evil, do not remain evil yourself. Are your coins turned to good, and do you remain evil?

There is indeed another understanding too; I will not keep silent about it either. The mammon of iniquity is all the riches of the world, wherever they come from. For wherever they are gathered from, they are the mammon of iniquity, that is, the riches of iniquity. What does “the riches of iniquity” mean? It is money, which iniquity calls by the name of riches. For if you seek true riches, they are other. Job, naked, abounded in such riches when he had a heart full toward God, and, having lost everything, brought forth praises to God like the most precious jewels. From what treasure, if he had nothing? These are the true riches. But those riches are named by iniquity. You have them; I do not find fault: an inheritance came, your father was rich and left them to you. You acquired them honestly: you have a house full from honest labor; I do not find fault. Yet even so, do not call them riches. For if you call them riches, you will love them; and if you love them, you will perish with them. Lose, so that you may not perish: give, so that you may gain: sow, so that you may reap. Do not call these riches, because they are not true ones. They are full of poverty, and always exposed to accidents. What kind of riches are these, because of which you fear a robber, because of which you fear your slave, lest he kill you, take them, and flee? If they were true riches, they would give you security.

So those are true riches which, when we have them, we cannot lose. And lest perhaps you fear a thief because of them, they will be where no one takes them away. Hear your Lord: “Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where no thief comes near.” Then they will be riches, when you have moved to them. As long as they are on earth, they are not riches. But the world calls them riches; iniquity calls them so. God calls it the mammon of iniquity for this reason, because iniquity calls those things riches. Hear the Psalm: “Lord, deliver me from the hand of foreign sons, whose mouth has spoken vanity, and their right hand is a right hand of iniquity; whose sons are like young plants, established in their youth; their daughters adorned, decked out round like the likeness of a temple; their storerooms full, overflowing from one into another; their oxen fat, their sheep fruitful, multiplying in their paths; no breach in the wall, no going out, no outcry in their streets.” You have seen the Psalm, what happiness it described: but hear who they are whom it set forth, the sons of iniquity: “whose mouth has spoken vanity, and their right hand is a right hand of iniquity.” It set them forth, and described their happiness only on earth. And what did it add? “They have called the people happy who have these things.” But who said it? Foreign sons, aliens, not belonging to the seed of Abraham: they called the people happy who have these things. Who said it? Those “whose mouth has spoken vanity.” So it is vanity to call those happy who have these things. And yet it is said by those whose mouth has spoken vanity. By them these riches are named, which are called the mammon of iniquity. But what do you say? Since those foreign sons, since those whose mouth has spoken vanity, called the people happy who have these things, what do you say? “These riches are false; give me true ones. You find fault with these; show what you praise. You want me to despise this; show me what I am to prefer.” Let the Psalm itself say. For he who said, “They have called the people happy who have these things,” gives us such an answer, as if we said to him, that is, to the Psalm itself: “See, you have taken this from us and given us nothing: see, these things, see, these things we despise; what shall we live on? From what shall we be happy?” For those who spoke will receive from themselves. For men called those happy who have riches. What do you say? He answers as if so questioned, and says: “They call the rich happy: I say, Happy the people whose God is the Lord.” You have heard of true riches: make friends by means of the mammon of iniquity, and you will be the happy people whose God is the Lord. Sometimes we pass along a road and see most pleasant and fertile estates, and we say: “Whose is that estate?” We are told it is so-and-so’s; and we say, “Happy man”: we speak vanity. Happy whose is that house, happy whose is that estate, happy whose is that flock, happy whose is that slave, happy whose is that household. Take away vanity, if you want to hear truth. “Happy is he whose God is the Lord.” For not he whose that estate is is happy, but he whose God he is. But to proclaim most openly the happiness of things, you say that your estate has made you happy. Why? Because you live from it. For when you praise your estate as something great, you say this: “It feeds me; I live from it.” Consider what you live from. He is the one you live from, to whom you say: “With you is the fountain of life.” “Happy the people whose God is the Lord.” O Lord my God, O Lord our God, so that we may come to you, make us happy from you. We do not want to be happy from gold, nor from silver, nor from estates: we do not want it from these earthly, most vain, passing things of a fleeting life. Let our mouth not speak vanity. Make us happy from you, because we shall not lose you. When we have held you, we shall neither lose you nor perish ourselves. Make us happy from you, because “happy the people whose God is the Lord.” Nor is he angry if we say of God, “Our estate.” For we read, “The Lord is the portion of my inheritance.” A great thing, brothers: we are both his inheritance and he is our inheritance: because we both worship him and he cultivates us. It is no insult to him that he cultivates us. For if we worship him as our God, he cultivates us as his field. And so that you may know that he cultivates us, hear him whom he sent to us: “I am the vine,” he says, “you are the branches; my Father is the farmer.” So he cultivates us. But if we yield fruit, he prepares a barn. But if under so great a cultivator we choose to be barren, and bring forth thorns instead of wheat, I do not want to say what follows; let us end on joy. Turning to the Lord, and so on.