Sermons to the People 142.1–143.5

The divine readings lift us up, lest we be broken by despair; and again they frighten us, lest we be puffed up by pride. But to keep the middle way, the true, the straight way, as it were between the left hand of despair and the right hand of presumption, would be most difficult for us, if Christ did not say, “I am,” he says, “the way, and the truth, and the life.” As if he said: By what way do you want to go? I am the way. To where do you want to go? I am the truth. Where do you want to remain? I am the life. So let us walk securely in the way; but let us fear the snares beside the way. The enemy does not dare to lay snares in the way, because Christ is the way: but beside the way he certainly does not stop. Hence it is said in the psalm too: “Beside the paths they have set stumbling blocks for me.” Another Scripture says too: “Remember that you are walking in the midst of snares.” These snares among which we walk are not in the way, but they are beside the way. What do you dread, what do you fear, if you walk in the way? Fear then, if you leave the way. For the enemy is allowed to set snares beside the way for this reason, so that the way may not be abandoned through the carelessness of exultation, and so one fall into the ambush.

Christ humble is the way: Christ is truth and life, Christ exalted and God. If you walk in the humble one, you will come to the exalted one. If in your weakness you do not despise the humble one, you will remain most strong in the exalted one. For what was the cause of Christ’s humility, but your weakness? For your weakness besieged you greatly and incurably, and this brought it about that so great a physician came to you. For if you had been sick only in such a way that you could go to the physician, the weakness itself could have seemed bearable. But because you could not go to him, he came to you. He came teaching humility, by which we may return: because pride did not allow us to return to life, and it was pride that had made us withdraw from life. For the human heart was exalted against God, and, neglecting in its health the healthful commandments, the soul fell into weakness: let it learn in weakness to listen to him whom it despised when strong. Let it listen so as to rise, to him whom it scorned and so fell. Let it hear at last, taught by experience, what it would not keep when it was commanded. For its misery has taught it what an evil it is to go whoring away from the Lord. For to withdraw from that simple and single good into this multitude of pleasures, into love of the world and earthly corruption, is to go whoring away from the Lord. And in a way he has spoken to her as she went whoring, so that she might return: very often through the prophets he rebukes her as a harlot, yet not as one despaired of; for he who rebukes the harlot has in his hand the cleansing of the harlot too.

For he does not rebuke so as to insult, but he wants to bring her to shame so as to heal her. Scripture cried out vehemently, and did not stroke with flattery those whom it wanted to restore by healing: “Adulterers, do you not know that a friend of this world is made an enemy of God?” Love of the world makes the soul an adulteress; love of the world’s maker makes the soul chaste: but unless she blushes at her corruption, she does not long to return to those chaste embraces. Let her be put to shame so that she may return, she who boasted so as not to return. So it was pride that hindered the soul’s return. But he who rebukes does not make the sin; he shows the sin. What the soul did not want to see is set before her eyes; and what she wanted to keep behind her back is brought before her face. See yourself in yourself. “Why do you see the speck in your brother’s eye, and do not see the beam in your own eye?” The soul is called back to herself, she who was going away from herself. As she had gone away from herself, so she was going away from her Lord. For she had looked at herself, and pleased herself, and had become a lover of her own power. She withdrew from him, and did not remain in herself: she is driven from herself, shut out from herself, and slips into outward things. She loves the world, loves temporal things, loves earthly things. If she loved herself, neglecting him by whom she was made, she would already be less, she would already be failing by loving what is less. For she herself is less than God; and far less, as much less as the thing made is less than the maker. So God was to be loved; and God is to be loved so much that, if possible, we forget ourselves. What, then, is this change? The soul has forgotten herself, but by loving the world: let her forget herself, but by loving the maker of the world. Driven out from herself, then, she has in a way lost herself: she cannot see her own deeds; she justifies her iniquities; she is lifted up and proud in wantonness, in luxury, in honors, in powers, in riches, in the might of vanity. She is rebuked, corrected, shown to herself; she displeases herself, confesses her foulness, desires beauty; and she who went out poured forth comes back put to shame.

Does he seem to pray against her, or for her, who says: “Fill their faces with disgrace”? He seems an adversary; he seems an enemy. Hear what follows, and see whether a friend could pray so. “Fill,” he says, “their faces with disgrace, and they will seek your name, O Lord.” Did he hate those whose faces he desired to be filled with disgrace? See how he loves those whom he wants to seek the name of the Lord. Does he only love, or only hate? Or does he both hate and love? Indeed, he both hates and loves. He hates what is yours; he loves you. What is “he hates what is yours, he loves you”? He hates what you have made; he loves what God has made. For what is yours but sins? And what are you but what God made, man in his image and likeness? You neglect what you were made; you love what you have made. You love your works outside you; you neglect God’s work in you. Rightly you go away, rightly you slip, rightly you go away even from yourself: rightly you hear, “A spirit that goes and does not return.” Hear rather him who calls and says, “Turn to me, and I will turn to you.” For God does not turn away and turn back: remaining, he corrects; unchangeable, he corrects. He is turned away because you turned yourself away. You fell away from him; he did not set away from you. So hear him saying to you, “Turn to me, and I will turn to you.” For this is: “I turn to you, because you turn to me.” He pursues the back of the one who flees; he lights up the face of the one who returns. For where will you flee, fleeing from God? Where will you flee, fleeing from him who is contained in no place and is absent nowhere? He who frees the one who turns punishes the one who turns away. Fleeing, you have a judge; returning, have a father.

But pride had swollen, and because of its very swelling it could not return through the narrow way. He who became the way cries out: “Enter by the narrow gate.” It tries to go in; the swelling hinders it: and the more it tries, the more harmfully it tries, the more the swelling hinders. For narrowness chafes a swollen thing; and the wind will swell it more; swelling more, when will it go in? So let it lose its swelling. How does it lose its swelling? Let it take the medicine of humility: let it drink against the swelling the bitter but healthful cup; let it drink the cup of humility. Why is it squeezed? Its bulk does not let it through: not great bulk, but swollen. For greatness has solidity; swelling has inflation. Let not the swollen man seem great to himself: let him lose his swelling, so that he may be great, firm, solid. Let him not desire these things, let him not glory in this pomp of slipping and corruptible things: let him hear the very one who said, “Enter by the narrow gate,” saying, “I am the way.” For as if the swollen man asked, “By what way shall I go in?”, “I am the way,” he says: “go in through me; you walk only through me to go in by the door.” For as he said, “I am the way,” so also, “I am the door.” Why do you ask by what way to return, to where to return, by what way to go in? Lest you stray anywhere, he himself has become everything for you. So he says briefly: Be humble, be meek. Let us hear him say this most plainly, so that you may see where the way is, what the way is, where the way leads. Where do you want to come? Perhaps out of greed you want to possess all things. “All things,” he says, “have been handed over to me by my Father.” Perhaps you will say: “They were handed over to Christ, but to me?” Hear the apostle saying (hear, as I said a while ago, so that you may not be broken by despair); hear how you were loved when you were not lovable; hear how you were loved when you were foul and ugly, before there was anything in you worthy to be loved. You were loved first, so that you might become worthy to be loved. For Christ, as the apostle says, died for the ungodly. Did the ungodly man perhaps deserve to be loved? I ask: what did the ungodly man deserve? To be condemned, you answer. Yet Christ died for the ungodly. See what was granted to you when ungodly; what is kept for you, now godly? What was granted to the ungodly? Christ died for the ungodly. But you desired to possess all things: do not seek it through greed; seek it through godliness, seek it through humility. For if you seek it so, you will possess it. For you will hold him through whom all things were made, and with him you will possess all things.

We do not say these things as if by our own reasoning. Hear the apostle himself saying: “He who did not spare his own Son, but handed him over for us all, how has he not also given us all things with him?” Greedy man, see, you have all things. Despise all the things you love, so that you are not hindered from Christ, and hold on to him in whom you can possess all things. So the physician himself, needing no such medicine, yet in order to encourage the sick man drank what he did not need: as if addressing one who refused it, and raising up one who trembled, he drank first. “The cup,” he says, “which I am about to drink”: I who have nothing in me to be healed by that cup will nevertheless drink it, so that you, who need to drink it, may not disdain to drink it. Now see, brothers, whether the human race ought to be sick any longer, having received such medicine. God now humble, and man still proud! Let him hear, let him learn. “All things,” he says, “have been handed over to me by my Father.” If you desire all things, you will have them with me: if you desire the Father, you will have him through me, and in me. “No one knows the Father except the Son.” Do not despair: come to the Son. Hear what follows: “and he to whom the Son wills to reveal him.” You were saying, “I cannot. You call me through a narrow way: I cannot go in through the narrow way.” “Come to me,” he says, “all you who labor and are burdened.” Your swelling is your burden. “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me.”

The teacher of the angels cries out, the Word of God cries out, by whom all rational minds are fed without failing, the food that refreshes and remains whole; he cries out and says, “Learn from me.” Let the people hear him saying, “Learn from me.” Let them answer, “What are we to learn from you?” For we are about to hear something, I know not what, from a great artist, when he says, “Learn from me.” Who is it that says, “Learn from me”? He who formed the earth, who divided sea and dry land, who created the birds, who created the land animals, who created all that swim, who set the stars in the sky, who distinguished day and night, who established the firmament itself, who separated light from darkness: he himself says, “Learn from me.” Is he perhaps going to tell us to do these things with him? Who can do that? God alone does it. “Do not fear,” he says; “I do not burden you. Learn from me this: what I became for your sake. Learn from me,” he says, “not how to form creation, which was made through me. Nor do I say that you should learn those things which I have given to some to whom I willed, not to all: to raise the dead, to give sight to the blind, to open the ears of the deaf. Do not want to learn these from me as something great.” The disciples returned glad and exultant, saying: “Look, in your name even the demons are subject to us.” The Lord said to them: “Do not rejoice in this, that the demons are subject to you; rejoice rather that your names are written in heaven.” To whom he willed he gave power to cast out demons; to whom he willed he gave power to raise the dead. These miracles were done even before the Lord’s incarnation: the dead were raised, lepers were cleansed; we read these things. And who did them then, but he who afterwards was Christ the man, after David, but Christ God before Abraham? He gave all these things, he did them through men: yet he did not give them to all. Should those to whom he did not give them despair, and say that they do not belong to him because they did not merit to receive these gifts? There are members in the body: this member can do one thing, that member another. God composed the body; he did not grant the ear to see, nor the eye to hear, nor the forehead to smell, nor the hand to taste; he did not give these: but to all the members he gave health, gave cohesion, gave unity; he quickened and united all alike by the spirit. So he did not give to some to raise the dead, to others he did not give to argue: yet what did he give to all? “Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart.” Since we have heard him saying, “I am meek and humble of heart”: my brothers, this is our whole medicine: “Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart.” What does it profit a man to work miracles if he is proud, not meek and humble of heart? Will he not be counted among those who will come at the end and say, “Did we not prophesy in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?” But what will they hear? “I do not know you. Depart from me, all you who work iniquity.”

What, then, does it profit us to learn? “For I am meek,” he says, “and humble of heart.” He is implanting love, and the most genuine love, without disorder, without inflation, without exaltation, without deceit: he implants this who says, “Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart.” How can a proud and puffed-up man have the most sincere love? He is bound to envy. Or perhaps he who envies loves, and we are mistaken? Far be it that anyone should be so mistaken as to say that an envious man has love. So what does the apostle say? “Love does not envy.” Why does it not envy? “It is not puffed up”: he at once added the reason why he took envy away from love. Because it is not puffed up, it does not envy. First he said, “Love does not envy”: but as if you were asking, “Why does it not envy?”, he added, “It is not puffed up.” If, then, one envies because one is puffed up, if one is not puffed up, one does not envy. If love is not puffed up and therefore does not envy, he implants love who says, “Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart.”

Now let anyone have what he will, boast of what he will. “If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become like sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.” What is more sublime than the gift of various tongues? It is brass, it is a tinkling cymbal, if you take away love. Hear other gifts: “If I know all mysteries.” What is more excellent? What more magnificent? Hear yet another: “If I have all prophecy and all faith, so that I move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.” He has gone on to greater things, brothers. What else did he say? “If I distribute all my goods to the poor.” What can be done more perfect? For the Lord commanded this to the rich man for the sake of perfection, saying: “If you want to be perfect, go, sell all that you have, and give to the poor.” Is a man perfect, then, because he has sold all his goods and given to the poor? No: that is why he added, “And come, follow me.” “Sell all,” he says, “give to the poor, and come, follow me.” Why should I follow you? Having sold everything and distributed it to the poor, am I not perfect? What need is there for me to follow you? Follow me, so that you may learn that I am meek and humble of heart. For can someone sell all his goods and give to the poor, and not yet be meek, not yet humble of heart? Certainly he can. For “if I distribute all my goods to the poor.” And hear further. For some, having left all that they had, and already following the Lord, but not yet following to perfection (for to follow to perfection is to imitate), could not bear the temptation of the passion. Peter, brothers, was already one of those who had left everything and followed the Lord. For when that rich man went away sad, and the disciples, troubled, asked how anyone at all could be perfect, and the Lord comforted them, they had said to the Lord: “See, we have left everything and followed you; what then shall we have?” And the Lord said what he would give them here and what he would keep for the future. Yet Peter was already one of those who had done these things. But when it came to the moment of the passion, at the voice of one maidservant he denied three times the one with whom he had promised to die.

Let your Charity attend, then: “Go,” he says, “sell all your goods, give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” Peter is perfect, now that the Lord sits in heaven at the Father’s right hand; then he was made perfect and mature. So when he was following the Lord to the passion, he was not perfect: but when the one he was following was no longer on earth, then he was perfect. Or rather, you always have before you the one you are to follow: the Lord set an example on earth when he left you the Gospel; in the Gospel he is with you. For he did not lie when he said: “See, I am with you all days, until the end of the age.” So follow the Lord. What is “follow the Lord”? Imitate the Lord. What is “imitate the Lord”? “Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart.” For “if I distribute all my goods to the poor, and hand over my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.” So I exhort your Charity to love itself: but I would not be exhorting you to love, except with some love. So what has been begun, I exhort that it be fulfilled; and what has been started, I ask that it be perfected. And I ask you to pray for me, so that what I urge on you may be perfected in me too. For we are all imperfect, and we shall be made perfect there where all things are perfect. The apostle Paul says: “Brothers, I do not consider that I have laid hold of it.” He himself says: “Not that I have already received it, or am already perfect.” And does any man dare to boast of perfection? Rather let us confess our imperfection, so that we may deserve perfection.

The medicine for all the wounds of the soul, and the one propitiation for the sins of men, is to believe in Christ. No one at all can be cleansed, whether from original sin, which he contracted from Adam, in whom all sinned and became by nature children of wrath, or from the sins which they themselves have added, not by resisting carnal desire but by following it and serving it in outrages and crimes, unless by faith they are joined and fitted together into the body of him who was conceived without any carnal enticement or deadly delight, whom his mother did not nourish in sins in the womb, and who “committed no sin, nor was deceit found in his mouth.” For those who believe in him become children of God, because they are born of God by the grace of adoption, which is in the faith of Jesus Christ our Lord. Therefore, beloved, the same Lord and Savior of ours rightly speaks of this one sin, of which the Holy Spirit convicts the world, that it does not believe in him. “I tell you the truth,” he says, “it is good for you that I go away. For if I do not go away, the Paraclete will not come to you; but if I go away, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: of sin, because they have not believed in me; of righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no longer; of judgment, because the prince of this world has been judged.”

So he wanted the world to be convicted of this one sin, that they do not believe in him: since by believing in him all sins are loosed, he wanted this one to be imputed, by which the rest are bound together. And because by believing they are born of God and become children of God (“For he gave them power to become children of God, to those who believe in him”), whoever believes in the Son of God, to the extent that he clings to him and himself becomes by adoption a son and heir of God and fellow heir with Christ, to that extent does not sin. Hence John says: “He who is born of God does not sin.” And therefore the sin of which the world is convicted is this, that they do not believe in him. This is the sin of which he likewise says: “If I had not come, they would not have sin.” For did they not have innumerable other sins? But by his coming this one sin was added for those who did not believe, by which the rest would be held fast. But in believers, because this one was absent, it came about that all were forgiven them. And for no other reason the apostle Paul says, “All have sinned, and lack the glory of God,” so that “whoever believes in him will not be put to shame”; as the psalm also says, “Come to him and be enlightened, and your faces will not be put to shame.” So whoever glories in himself will be put to shame, for he will not be found without sins. Only he, then, will not be put to shame who glories in the Lord. “For all have sinned, and lack the glory of God.” So when he was speaking of the unbelief of the Jews, he did not say: “For if some of them sinned, will their sin make void the faithfulness of God?” For how would he say, “If some of them sinned,” when he himself said, “For all have sinned”? But he said, “If some of them did not believe, will their unbelief make void the faithfulness of God?”, so as to point out more expressly this sin by which alone one is locked in against the rest, so that they are not loosed by God’s grace. Of this one sin the world is convicted through the coming of the Holy Spirit, that is, through the gift of his grace given to believers, as the Lord says, “Of sin, because they have not believed in me.”

But the merit of believers would not be great, nor their happiness glorious, if the Lord always appeared to human eyes in his risen body. So the Holy Spirit brought this great gift to those who were to believe: that they should sigh for him whom they did not see with fleshly eyes, with a mind sober from fleshly desires and drunk with spiritual longings. Hence also that disciple who had said he would not believe unless he touched Christ’s scars with his hand, when, having handled the Lord’s body, he cried out as if waking up, “My Lord and my God!”, the Lord said to him: “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.” This blessedness the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, brought: that, with the form of a servant, which he took from the virgin’s womb, removed from the eyes of the flesh, the purified gaze of the mind might be directed to the very form of God, in which, equal to the Father, he remained even when he deigned to appear in the flesh; so that the apostle, filled with the same Spirit, might say, “Even if we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know him so no longer.” For he knows even Christ’s flesh not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit, who recognizes the power of his resurrection not by curiously handling it but by believing it with certainty; not saying in his heart, “Who has ascended into heaven?” (that is, to bring Christ down), or, “Who has descended into the abyss?” (that is, to bring Christ back from the dead). “But the word is near,” he says, “in your mouth, that Jesus is Lord: and if you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes to righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made to salvation.” These, brothers, are the words of the apostle, pouring forth in the holy drunkenness of the Holy Spirit himself.

Since, then, we could in no way have this blessedness, by which we do not see and yet believe, unless we received it from the Holy Spirit, rightly was it said, “It is good for you that I go away. For if I do not go away, the Paraclete will not come to you; but if I go away, I will send him to you.” By his divinity he is indeed always with us; but unless he had gone away from us bodily, we would always see his body carnally and never believe spiritually; and it is by that faith, justified and made blessed, that we may deserve to contemplate with a cleansed heart that very Word, God with God, through whom all things were made, and who was made flesh to dwell among us. And if it is not by touching with the hand but with the heart that one believes to righteousness, rightly is the world convicted of our righteousness, since it will not believe anything but what it sees. But so that we might have the righteousness of faith, of which the unbelieving world would be convicted, the Lord said, “Of righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no longer.” As if he said: This will be your righteousness, that you believe in me the mediator, whom you will hold most certainly to have risen and gone to the Father, although you do not see him carnally; so that, reconciled through him, you may be able to see God spiritually. Hence he said to the woman who bore the figure of the Church, when after the resurrection she fell at his feet: “Do not touch me; for I have not yet ascended to the Father.” This is understood as said in a mystery: Do not believe in me carnally by bodily touch; but you will believe spiritually, that is, you will touch me by spiritual faith, when I have ascended to the Father. For blessed are those who do not see and believe. And this is the righteousness of faith, lacking which the world is convicted by us who do not lack it: for “the righteous lives by faith.” So whether because, rising in him and coming in him to the Father, we too are invisibly perfected in justification, or because, not seeing and believing, we live by faith, since the righteous lives by faith, therefore he said, “Of righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no longer.”

Nor let the world excuse itself on the ground that it is hindered by the devil from believing in Christ. For in believers the prince of the world is cast out, so that he no longer works in the hearts of men whom Christ has begun to possess by faith, as he works in the children of unbelief, whom he often stirs up to test and afflict the righteous. For because he who ruled within has been cast out, he fights from outside. And though through his persecutions the Lord “guides the meek in judgment,” yet by the very fact that he has been cast out, he has already been judged. And of this judgment the world is convicted: because in vain does he complain of the devil who will not believe in Christ, when the devil, judged, that is, cast out, and allowed to attack from outside for our training, has been conquered not only by men but also by women, and boys and girls, martyrs. But in whom did they conquer, if not in him in whom they believed, whom they loved without seeing him, and with whom ruling in their hearts they were rid of that worst of rulers? And all this through grace, that is, through the gift of the Holy Spirit. Rightly, then, the same Spirit convicts the world both of sin, because it does not believe in Christ; and of righteousness, because those who willed believed, although they did not see him in whom they believed, and hoped that through his resurrection they too would be perfected in the resurrection; and of judgment, because they themselves, if they willed to believe, would be hindered by no one, since the prince of this world has already been judged.