Sermons to the People 151.1–151.8

Whenever the divine reading which was recited from the Epistle of the apostle Paul is read, it is to be feared that, misunderstood, it may give occasion to people looking for an occasion. For people are prone to sin and scarcely hold themselves back. So when they hear the apostle saying, “For I do not do the good that I want; but the evil that I hate, this I do,” they do evil, and, as if displeased with themselves for doing evil, they think they are like the apostle, who said: “For I do not do the good that I want; but the evil that I do not want, this I do.” So whenever it is read, it lays on us the necessity of discussing it, lest people take healthy food wrongly and turn it into poison. So let your Charity be attentive while I tell you what the Lord grants, so that, where you see me perhaps laboring with the difficulty of some obscurity, you may help me with the affection of piety.

First, then, recall what by God’s favor you are used to hearing: that the life of the righteous in this body is still a war, not yet a triumph. But of this war there will one day be a triumph. Therefore the apostle uttered both the cries of war and the cries of triumph. The cries of war we have just heard: “For I do not do what I want; but what I hate, that I do. But if what I hate, that I do, I agree with the Law, that it is good. To will is present with me, but to accomplish the good I do not find. But I see another law in my members, fighting against the law of my mind and taking me captive in the law of sin which is in my members.” When you hear “fighting,” when you hear “taking captive,” do you not recognize a war? So the cry of triumph is not yet: but because it will be, the same apostle teaches you, saying: “This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. And when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality”: there is the cry of triumph: “then will come about the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.” Let those who triumph say: “Where, O death, is your contention?” We shall say it, then; we shall say it some day; and that “some day” will not be far off. For not as much of the world remains as has already passed. This, then, we shall say then. But now, in this war, lest this reading, misunderstood, be the enemy’s trumpet rather than ours, rousing him rather than defeating him: attend, I beg you, my brothers, and you who are fighting, fight. For you who are not yet fighting will not understand what I say; you who are already fighting will understand. My voice will be in the open; yours will be in silence. First recall what he wrote to the Galatians, from which this can be well explained. For speaking to the faithful, speaking to the baptized, to whom all sins had certainly been forgiven in the holy washing; speaking to them, but speaking to them as fighters, he says: “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and do not fulfil the desires of the flesh.” He did not say, “do not do,” but, “do not fulfil.” Why this? He goes on and says: “For the flesh desires against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh. For these are opposed to each other, so that you do not do the things you will. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are no longer under the Law”: but certainly under grace. If you are led by the Spirit: what is it to be led by the Spirit? To consent to the Spirit of God commanding, not to the flesh desiring. Yet the flesh desires and resists; it wants something, and you do not: persevere in not wanting it.

Yet your longing toward God ought to be such that even the desire which you resist does not exist. See what I have said: your longing toward God, I say, ought to be such that there is no desire at all which must be resisted. For you resist, and you conquer by not consenting: but it is better to have no enemy than to conquer one. This enemy will one day not exist. Turn your mind to the cry of triumph, and see whether it will exist. “Where, O death, is your contention?” It will not exist. “Where, O death, is your sting?” You will look for its place and not find it. For this is not (and this you most need to hear), this is not some other nature, as the Manichees rave. It is our sickness, it is our fault. It will not be set apart somewhere else; healed, it will be nowhere. So “do not fulfil the desires of the flesh.” It would indeed be better to fulfil what the Law said, “You shall not desire.” This is the fullness of virtue, the perfection of righteousness, the palm of victory: “You shall not desire.” Since this cannot be fulfilled now, let at least that be fulfilled which holy Scripture also says: “Do not go after your desires.” It is better not to have them: but since they exist, do not go after them. They will not follow you: do not follow them. If they were willing to follow you, they would not be there at all, for they would not rebel against your mind. They rebel: rebel back; they fight: fight; they attack: attack them; only see to this, that they do not conquer.

See, I will set out one case from which you may understand the rest. You know there are sober men: they are fewer, but they exist. You know there are drunkards too: they abound. A sober man is baptized: as regards drunkenness, he has nothing to fight with; he has other desires to fight with. But so that you may understand about the rest, let us set in the middle the contest with just one enemy. A drunkard is baptized: he has heard, and heard with fear, that among the other evils by which the kingdom of God is shut to those who live badly, drunkenness too was named: for where it was said, “Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor the effeminate, nor men who lie with males, nor thieves,” there was added, “nor drunkards” and so on “will possess the kingdom of God.” He heard, and feared. He was baptized; all his drunkenness was forgiven him: the hostile habit remains. So the reborn man has something to fight with. All his past vices have been forgiven him: let him watch, be vigilant, fight, so that he may never get drunk again. So that desire for drink rises up, tickles the mind, brings dryness to the throat, lays ambushes for the senses: it even wants, if it can, to break through the wall, reach the one shut in, drag him off captive. It fights: fight back. O, if only it too did not exist! If it came by bad habit, it will die by good habit: only do not satisfy it; do not sate it by yielding, but kill it by resisting. Yet as long as it exists, it is an enemy. If you do not consent to it, and never get drunk, it will be less and less every day. For your submission is its strength. For if you yield to it and get drunk, you give it strength. Is that against me, and not against you? I warn, I say, I preach from the higher place: I announce beforehand what evil is to come to drunkards. You cannot say, “I did not hear”: you cannot say, “God requires my soul at the hand of him who kept silent to me.” But you labor, because by bad habit you yourself made a strong adversary for yourself. You did not labor to feed it: labor to conquer it. And if you are not able enough against it, ask God. Yet if it has not conquered you, although that bad habit of yours has wrestled for a foothold, if it has not conquered you, you have done what the apostle Paul says, “Do not fulfil the desires of the flesh.” The desire was at work by tickling; but it was not fulfilled by drinking.

What I have said of drunkenness, say of all vices, say of all desires. For with some we were born; others we made by habit. For because of those with which we were born, infants are baptized, so that they may be freed from the guilt of their descent, not of bad habit, which they did not have. So we must always fight, because the very desire with which we were born cannot be ended as long as we live: it can be lessened daily; it cannot be ended. Because of it this body of ours was called a body of death. Of it the apostle says: “For I delight in the law of God according to the inner man. But I see another law in my members fighting against the law of my mind, and taking me captive in the law of sin which is in my members.” This law was born then, when the first law was transgressed. This law was born then, I say, when the first law was despised and transgressed. What is the first law? The one man received in paradise. Were they not naked, and not ashamed? Why were they naked and not ashamed, except that there was not yet a law in the members fighting against the law of the mind? Man did a deed to be punished, and found a motion to be ashamed of. They ate against the prohibition, and their eyes were opened. What? Did they wander about in paradise before with their eyes shut, or blind? Far from it. For how did Adam give names to the birds and beasts, when all the animals were brought to him? To what was he giving names, if he did not see? Then it was said, “The woman saw the tree, that it was pleasing to the eyes to look at.” So they had their eyes open; and they were naked, and were not ashamed. But their eyes were opened to something they had never felt, something they had never been alarmed at in the motion of their body. Their eyes were opened to take notice, not to see: and because they felt something to be ashamed of, they took care to cover it. “They sewed,” it says, “fig leaves, and made themselves girdles.” What they covered is where they felt it. See where original sin is drawn from; see why no one is born without sin. See why the Lord, whom the virgin conceived, did not will to be conceived in this way. He loosed it who came without it: he loosed it who did not come from it. Hence one and one: one to death, one to life. The first man to death, the second man to life. But why that man to death? Because only a man. Why this man to life? Because God and man.

So the apostle does not do what he wants; because he wants not to desire, and yet he desires; therefore he does not do what he wants. Did that evil desire drag the apostle, subdued, to fornication and adulteries? Far from it. Let not such thoughts enter our heart. He wrestled; he was not subdued. But because he did not want to have even that against which he wrestled, therefore he said: “I do not do what I want.” I do not want to desire, and I desire. So I do not do what I want; but still I do not consent to desire. For otherwise he would not say, “Do not fulfil the desires of the flesh,” if he himself fulfilled them. But he set his own fight before your eyes, so that you would not fear yours. For if the blessed apostle had not said this, then when you saw desire moving in your members, though you did not consent to it, yet seeing it move you might perhaps despair of yourself and say: “If I belonged to God, I would not be moved like this.” See the apostle fighting, and do not make yourself despair. “I see another law,” he says, “in my members fighting against the law of my mind.” And because I do not want it to fight (for it is my flesh, it is I myself, it is part of me), “I do not do what I want; but the evil I hate, this I do”: because I desire.

What good, then, do I do? That I do not consent to evil desire. I do good and do not accomplish good; and desire, my enemy, does evil and does not accomplish evil. How do I do good and not accomplish good? I do good when I do not consent to evil desire; but I do not accomplish the good, which would be not to desire at all. Again, how does my enemy do evil and not accomplish evil? It does evil because it stirs up evil longing; it does not accomplish evil, because it does not drag me into evil. And the whole life of the saints is in this war. What shall I say now of the unclean, who do not even fight? They are dragged along, subdued; no, they are not even dragged, because they follow willingly. This, I say, is the fight of the saints; and in this war a man is always in danger until he dies. But at the end, that is, in the triumph of that victory, what is said? Or rather, what does the apostle say, already meditating on the triumph? “Then will come about the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your contention?” The cry of those who triumph. “Where, O death, is your sting? Now the sting of death is sin”: by whose sting death came about. Sin is like a scorpion: it stung us, and we died. But when it is said, “Where, O death, is your sting?” (the sting by which you were made, not the sting you made), when, then, it is said, “Where, O death, is your sting?”, certainly it will not exist, because sin will not exist. “Now the sting of death is sin.” Against sin the Law was given. “But the power of sin is the Law”? How is the Law the power of sin? “It came in so that the offense might abound.” How so? Because before the Law man was a sinner; when the Law was given and transgressed, he became a transgressor as well. People were held guilty by sin: when the Law was given, they were made more guilty by transgression.

What, then, are the faithful to do now? Where is hope, except in what follows: “Where sin abounded, grace abounded the more”? Therefore this soldier, most practiced in this war, so practiced that he was also a commander, when he was laboring in this war against the enemy and saying, “I see another law in my members, fighting against the law of my mind and taking me captive in the law of sin which is in my members” (a foul law, a wretched law, a wound, a decay, a sickness), added: “Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this death?” And help came to him as he groaned. How did help come? “The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” He will deliver you from the law of this death, that is, from the body of this death: the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord. When will you have a body in which no desire will remain? When this mortal has put on immortality, and this corruptible has put on incorruption, and it will be said to death, “Where, O death, is your contention?”, and it will not exist; “Where, O death, is your sting?”, and it will be nowhere. And now what? Hear: “So I myself with my mind serve the law of God, but with my flesh the law of sin.” With my mind I serve the law of God by not consenting; with my flesh the law of sin by desiring. Both with my mind the law of God, and with my flesh the law of sin. Here I delight, and there I desire; but I am not conquered: it tickles, it lies in ambush, it knocks, it tries to drag me off: “Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this death?” I do not want always to be conquering: I want some day to come to peace. Now, then, brothers, keep this measure: with the mind serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin; but of necessity, because you desire, not because you consent. Sometimes this desire so lies in ambush for the saints that it does to them asleep what it cannot do to them awake. Why did you all call out, if not because you all recognized it? I am ashamed to dwell on this here, but let us not be ashamed to pray to God about it. Turning to the Lord, and so on.