Sermons to the People 198.1–201.3

We remind Your Love, brothers, since we see that you have come together today as if for a festival, and have gathered on this day in greater numbers than usual, to remember what you have just sung, so that your tongue may not resound while your heart is mute; but what you sounded with your voice to one another's ears, cry out with your affection to the ears of God. For this is what you were singing: “Save us, Lord our God, and gather us from the nations, that we may confess your holy name.” And now, if the festival of the nations which takes place today in worldly and fleshly merriment, in the din of the emptiest and foulest songs, in banquets and shameful dances, in the celebration of that false festivity itself, if the things the nations do do not delight you, you will be gathered from the nations.

You certainly sang it, and the sound of the divine song is still fresh in your ears: “Save us, Lord our God, and gather us from the nations.” Who can be gathered from the nations unless he is saved? Those, then, who mix with the nations are not saved; but those are saved who are gathered from the nations, by the salvation of faith, the salvation of hope, the salvation of most sincere love, spiritual salvation, the salvation of God's promises. Yet whoever believes, hopes, and loves is not at once to be called saved. For it matters what he believes, what he hopes, and what he loves. For no one lives any kind of life without these three affections of the soul: believing, hoping, loving. If you do not believe what the nations believe, do not hope what the nations hope, do not love what the nations love, you are gathered from the nations, you are segregated, that is, separated from the nations. And do not let bodily mixing frighten you when there is so great a separation of mind. For what is so separated as that they believe demons to be gods, while you believe in him who is the one and true God? That they hope for the empty things of the world, while you hope for eternal life with Christ? That they love the world, while you love the maker of the world? Whoever, then, believes otherwise, hopes otherwise, and loves otherwise, let him prove it by his life and show it by his deeds. Are you going to celebrate the New Year's gifts like a pagan, play at dice, and get drunk? How then do you believe otherwise, hope otherwise, love otherwise? How can you sing with an unashamed brow, “Save us, Lord our God, and gather us from the nations”? For you are segregated from the nations, though mixed with the nations in body, by a different life. And see how great this segregation is, if only you do it, if only you prove it. For our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who became man for us, has already paid the price for us. He paid his price for this purpose: to redeem, to gather from the nations. But if you mix with the nations, you do not want to follow him who redeemed you; and you mix with the nations by life, by deeds, by heart, by believing such things, hoping such things, loving such things: you are ungrateful to your Redeemer, and you do not recognize your price, the blood of the spotless Lamb. So, to follow your Redeemer, who redeemed you with his blood, do not mix with the nations by likeness of morals and deeds. They give New Year's gifts; you give alms. They are diverted by songs of debauchery; you be diverted by the words of the Scriptures. They run to the theater; you to the church. They get drunk; you fast. If you cannot fast today, at least dine with sobriety. If you do this, you have sung well: “Save us, Lord our God, and gather us from the nations.”

So many will wrestle in their hearts today with the word they have heard. For we said: Do not give New Year's gifts; give to the poor. It is not enough to give only as much; give even more. You do not want to give more? Then give at least as much. But you say to me: When I give New Year's gifts, I receive some myself. What then, when you give to the poor, do you receive nothing? Surely you do not believe what the nations believe; surely you do not hope what the nations hope. See, if you say that you receive nothing back when you have given to the poor, you have become part of the Gentiles: you sang in vain, “Save us, Lord our God, and gather us from the nations.” Do not forget that rule where it is said: “Whoever gives to the poor will never be in want.” Have you already forgotten what the Lord will say to those who gave to the poor, “Come, blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom”? And what will be said to those who did not give, “Send them into the eternal fire”? Now those who heard gladly what he said are surely standing with those who did not hear it gladly. I am speaking now to true Christians. If you believe otherwise, hope otherwise, love otherwise, then live otherwise, and prove your different faith, hope, and love by different morals. Hear the Apostle admonishing: “Do not,” he says, “be yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with iniquity? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What part has a believer with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of the Lord with idols?” And elsewhere he says: “What the nations sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God. I do not want you,” he says, “to become partners of demons.” So their gods delight in their morals. But he who said, “I do not want you to become partners of demons,” wanted them to be separated in life and morals from those who served demons. For those demons delight in songs of vanity, they delight in trifling spectacles and the various indecencies of the theaters, the madness of the circus, the cruelty of the amphitheater, the passionate contests of those who for pestilent men take up quarrels and contentions even to the point of enmity, for a mime, an actor, a pantomime, a charioteer, a beast fighter. Those who do these things offer, as it were, incense to demons from their hearts. For seducing spirits rejoice in those they have seduced, and they feed on the evil morals and the shameful and infamous life of those whom they have seduced and deceived. “But you,” as the Apostle says, “have not so learned Christ, if indeed you have heard him and been taught in him. Do not, therefore, become partners with them. For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord; walk as children of light”: so that we too, who preach the word of the Lord to you, may rejoice with you and over you in that everlasting light.

Recently we celebrated the day on which the Lord was born from the Jews; today we celebrate the day on which he was worshipped by the Gentiles. For salvation is from the Jews; but this salvation reaches to the ends of the earth. For on that day the shepherds worshipped, today the Magi. To the former angels announced it, to the latter a star. Both learned from heaven when they saw the king of heaven on earth, so that there might be glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will. For he is our peace, who has made both one. Already from this point the infant, born and announced, is shown to be that cornerstone; already at the very beginning of his birth he appeared as such. Already he began to join two walls coming from different directions in himself, bringing the shepherds from Judea and the Magi from the East, so as to create in himself one new man out of the two, making peace: peace to those who are far off and peace to those who are near. And so the former, coming from nearby on that very day, and the latter, coming from afar today, marked two days for later generations to celebrate; yet both saw the one light of the world.

But today we must speak of those whom faith led to Christ from distant lands. For they came and sought him, saying: “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the East and have come to worship him.” They announce and they ask, they believe and they seek, as if signifying those who walk by faith and long for sight. Had not other kings of the Jews already been born in Judea so many times? Why is it that this one is recognized in heaven by foreigners and sought on earth; shines on high and is hidden in lowliness? In the East the Magi see a star, and they understand that a king has been born in Judea. Who is this king, so small, so great, not yet speaking on earth, already publishing edicts in heaven? Yet for our sake, to whom he willed to become known from his holy Scriptures, he willed that even the Magi, to whom he had given so clear a sign in heaven, and to whose hearts he had revealed that he had been born in Judea, should nevertheless believe his prophets about him. For in seeking the city in which he had been born, whom they longed to see and worship, they had to ask the leaders of the Jews; so that these, from the holy Scripture which they carried in their mouth, not in their heart, might, as unbelievers, answer believers about the grace of faith: liars on their own account, truthful against themselves. For what would it have cost them to become companions of those seeking Christ, when they had heard from them that, having seen his star, they had come longing to worship him; to lead them themselves to Bethlehem of Judah, which they had pointed out from the divine books, and to see together, understand together, worship together? As it is, having shown others the fountain of life, they themselves died of thirst. They became to them like milestones: they showed something to travelers on their way, but they themselves remained dull and unmoving. The Magi sought in order to find; Herod sought in order to destroy; the Jews read of the city of the one being born but did not understand the time of his coming. Between the devout love of the Magi and the cruel fear of Herod, they vanished after pointing out Bethlehem; but Christ, who was born there, whom they did not then seek, they would later deny when they had seen him, and would later kill, not then as an infant, but when he was speaking. Happier was the ignorance of the infants whom Herod in terror persecuted than the knowledge of those whom in alarm he consulted. The infants could suffer for Christ, whom they could not yet confess; these did not follow the truth of him as he taught, though they could know the city of his birth.

That star led the Magi to the very place where God the Word was an infant. Here let sacrilegious folly blush, and what I may call an unlearned learning, which thinks that Christ was born under the decree of the stars because it is written in the Gospel that, when he was born, the Magi saw his star in the East. That would not be true even if men were born under such a decree, since they are born not, like the Son of God, by their own will, but by the condition of mortal nature. But in fact it is so far from the truth that Christ was born under a starry fate that whoever rightly believes in Christ believes that no man is born so. But let vain men say what they foolishly think about the nativities of men; let them deny the will by which they sin, and invent a necessity by which to defend their sins; let them try to fix even in heaven the depraved morals for which they are detested by men on earth, and falsely claim that these flow from the stars: yet let each of them see how he thinks his household, if not his life, should be ruled by whatever authority he has; since, holding these views, he may not beat his slaves who sin in the house unless he is first compelled to blaspheme his gods shining in the sky. But even according to their own most empty conjectures and their books, which are not fate-telling but plainly false-telling, they cannot think that Christ was born under the decree of the stars because, when he was born, the Magi saw a star in the East. For by this, rather, Christ appeared not as under its dominion but as its Lord: because it did not keep to starry paths in the sky, but showed men seeking Christ the way all the way to the place where he had been born. So the star did not make Christ live wonderfully, but Christ made it appear wonderfully; nor did it decree Christ's wonders, but Christ showed it among his wonders. For he who, born of the Father, formed heaven and earth, born of his mother showed a new star in heaven. At his birth a new light was revealed in a star; at his death the ancient light was veiled in the sun. At his birth the heavens shone with new honor; at his death the underworld trembled with new fear; at his rising the disciples burned with new love; at his ascending the heavens opened with new obedience. Let us celebrate, then, with devout solemnity this day too, on which the Magi from the Gentiles worshipped Christ when they had come to know him, as we celebrated that day on which shepherds from Judea saw Christ when he had been born. For the Lord our God himself chose apostles from Judea as shepherds, through whom to gather sinners to be saved from the Gentiles too.

To worship the Virgin's child the Magi came from the East. This day we celebrate today; to it we pay the solemnity and sermon that are due. For them this day dawned for the first time; for us it has returned as a yearly festival. They were the firstfruits of the Gentiles; we are the people of the Gentiles. To us the tongue of the apostles announced it; to them a star, as it were the tongue of the heavens; and to us the same apostles, as heavens, have told the glory of God. For why should we not recognize as heavens those who were made the seat of God? As it is written: “The soul of the righteous is the seat of wisdom.” Through these heavens the maker and dweller of the heavens thundered; at that thunder the world trembled, and see, now it believes. A great mystery. He was lying then in a manger, and he was leading the Magi from the East. He was hidden in a stable and recognized in heaven, so that, recognized in heaven, he might be manifested in the stable, and this day might be called Epiphany, which in Latin can be called manifestation: commending at once his loftiness and his humility, so that he who was shown in the open sky by starry signs might be sought and found in a cramped lodging; weak in infant limbs, wrapped in infant cloths, worshipped by the Magi, feared by the wicked.

For King Herod feared him when the same Magi told him of him, while they were still seeking the little one whom, by heaven's witness, they had learned was already born. What will the tribunal of the judge be like, when the cradle of the infant terrified proud kings? How much wiser kings are now, who do not seek to kill him like Herod, but rather, like the Magi, delight to worship him; especially now that he has endured from his enemies, and even for his enemies, the very death which the enemy longed to inflict, and, slain in his body, has slain death. Let kings now fear with devotion him who already sits at the Father's right hand, whom that ungodly king feared while he was still sucking at his mother's breasts. Let them hear what is written: “And now, kings, understand; be instructed, you who judge the earth; serve the Lord in fear, and rejoice in him with trembling.” For this king, avenger of ungodly kings and guide of godly ones, was not born as kings are born in the world; for he was born whose kingdom is not of this world. The nobility of the one being born lay in the virginity of the one giving birth; and the nobility of the one giving birth lay in the divinity of the one being born. Finally, though so many kings of the Jews had already been born and had died, the Magi never sought any of them to worship, because they had not learned of any of them by heaven speaking.

Yet, and this must not be passed over, this illumination of the Magi stood as a great testimony to the blindness of the Jews. These sought in the land of the Jews the one whom the Jews did not recognize in their own land. These found among them as an infant the one whom they denied among themselves when he taught. In those lands these strangers from afar worshipped the child Christ, not yet uttering words, where those citizens crucified him as a young man working miracles. These recognized God in small limbs; those did not spare him even as a man in great deeds: as if it were more to see a new star shining at his birth than the sun mourning at his death. And further, that same star which led the Magi to the place where the infant God was with his virgin mother, and which could surely have led them to the city itself, nevertheless withdrew and did not appear to them at all until those same Jews were asked about the city in which Christ was to be born, so that they themselves would name it according to the testimony of divine Scripture, they themselves would say, “In Bethlehem of Judah.” For so it is written: “And you, Bethlehem, land of Judah, are by no means least among the princes of Judah; for from you shall come forth a leader who will rule my people Israel.” What did divine providence signify here but that the divine Scriptures would remain among the Jews alone, by which the Gentiles would be instructed and they would be blinded; which they would carry not as a help to their own salvation but as a testimony to ours? For today, when we bring forward the prophecies made beforehand about Christ, now made clear by the light of their fulfilment, if perhaps the pagans whom we wish to win should say that they were not foretold so long before but were invented by us after the event, so that what has happened might be thought to have been prophesied, we read out the books of the Jews, so that the doubt of the pagans may be removed. The pagans were already figured in those Magi whom the Jews instructed from the divine oracles about the city in which Christ was born, while they themselves neither sought him nor recognized him.

Now therefore, dearly beloved, children and heirs of grace, consider your calling, and cling with most persevering love to Christ, manifested to Jews and Gentiles as the cornerstone. For he was manifested in the very cradle of his infancy to those who were near and to those who were far: to the Jews in the nearness of the shepherds, to the Gentiles in the distance of the Magi. The former are believed to have come to him on the very day he was born, the latter today. So he was manifested neither to those as learned nor to these as righteous. For ignorance prevails in the rusticity of shepherds, and ungodliness in the sacrileges of the Magi. That cornerstone joined both to himself, since he came to choose the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and to call not the righteous but sinners, so that no great one should be proud and no lowly one despair. Hence the scribes and Pharisees, seeming to themselves too learned and too righteous, pointed out, as they recited the prophetic oracles, the city of his birth, yet as builders rejected him. But since he has become the head of the corner, and what he showed at his birth he fulfilled in his passion, let us cling to him with the other wall, which holds the remnant of Israel saved by the election of grace. For those shepherds prefigured them, to be joined from nearby; so that we too, whose calling from afar the coming of the Magi signified, may remain no longer strangers and sojourners but fellow citizens of the saints and members of God's household, built together on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the chief cornerstone, who has made both one; so that in the One we may love unity, and may have tireless love for gathering back the branches which, though grafted in from the wild olive, were broken off through pride and became heretics, since God is able to graft them in again.

A very few days ago we celebrated the Lord's birthday; today we celebrate with no less due solemnity the manifestation by which he began to be manifested to the Gentiles. On that day the Jewish shepherds saw him born; today the Magi coming from the East worshipped him. For that cornerstone had been born, the peace of two walls from circumcision and uncircumcision, which came from no small difference, so that they might be joined in him who has become our peace and has made both one. This was foreshadowed in the shepherds of the Jews and the Magi of the Gentiles. From there began what was to bear fruit and grow in the whole world. Let us therefore hold these two days, of the Nativity and of the Manifestation of our Lord, most dear with spiritual joy. The Jewish shepherds were led to him by an angel's announcement, the Gentile Magi by a star pointing the way. This star confounded the vain calculations and divinations of astrologers, when it showed to worshippers of stars that the Creator of heaven and earth was rather to be worshipped. For he who, slain, darkened the ancient sun, at his birth made known a new star. With that light the faith of the Gentiles began; by that darkness the faithlessness of the Jews was accused. What was that star, which had never appeared among the stars before and did not remain afterwards to be pointed out? What was it, if not a magnificent tongue of heaven, to tell the glory of God, to proclaim with unaccustomed brightness the unaccustomed childbearing of a virgin, and to be succeeded, when it no longer appeared, by the Gospel throughout the whole world? What, finally, did the Magi say when they came? “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews?” What is this? Had not so many kings of the Jews been born before? Why did they so greatly desire to know and worship the king of a foreign nation? “For we have seen,” they say, “his star in the East and have come to worship him.” Would they have sought this with such devotion, desired it with such affection of piety, unless they recognized as king of the Jews him who is also king of the ages?

Hence Pilate too was touched by some breath of truth when, at his passion, he wrote the title “King of the Jews,” which the Jews, themselves in error, tried to correct. He answered them, “What I have written, I have written”; because it had been foretold in the psalm, “Do not corrupt the inscription of the title.” Let us note, then, this great and wonderful mystery. The Magi were from the Gentiles; Pilate too was from the Gentiles. They saw a star in heaven; he wrote a title on the wood. Yet both sought or recognized not the king of the Gentiles but of the Jews. But the Jews themselves neither followed the star nor agreed with the title. So there was already foreshadowed what the Lord himself said later: “Many will come from the East and the West and recline with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven; but the sons of the kingdom will go into the outer darkness.” For the Magi had come from the East, Pilate from the West. So they bore witness to the king of the Jews rising, that is, being born; and he to him setting, that is, dying: so that they might recline in the kingdom of heaven with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, from whom the Jews drew their origin, not descended from them by the flesh but grafted into them by faith; so that already the wild olive of which the Apostle speaks, to be grafted into the olive, was foreshown. That is why it was not the king of the Gentiles but of the Jews who was sought or recognized by those same Gentiles: because the wild olive was coming to the olive, not the olive to the wild olive. Yet the branches to be broken off, that is, the unbelieving Jews, both answered the Magi when they asked where Christ was to be born, “In Bethlehem of Judah,” and raged most stubbornly when Pilate reproached them for wanting their king crucified. So the Magi worshipped, the Jews showing the place of Christ's birth, because we know Christ in the Scripture which the Jews received. Pilate, from the Gentiles, washed his hands while the Jews demanded Christ's death, because we wash away our sins in the blood that the Jews shed. But about Pilate's testimony through the title, in which he wrote that Christ was king of the Jews, there is another occasion for discussion: the season of the Passion.

Now, as regards the manifestation of the newborn Christ, whose day of manifestation is called by the Greek word Epiphany, on which he began to be manifested to the Gentiles when the Magi worshipped him, let us say the few things that remain. For it is a delight to consider again and again how the Jews answered the Magi when they asked where Christ was to be born, “In Bethlehem of Judah,” and yet did not themselves come to him, but when the Magi had gone away the same star led them to the place where the infant was; so that it was shown that the star could have pointed out the city too, but had withdrawn itself for a while so that the Jews might be asked. And the Jews were asked so that it might be shown that they carry the divine testimonies not for their own salvation and knowledge but for that of the Gentiles. For this is why that nation was driven from its kingdom and scattered through the lands: so that they might be compelled everywhere to become witnesses to the faith of which they are enemies. For having lost the temple, the sacrifice, the priesthood, and the kingdom itself, they keep their name and race in a few ancient rites, lest, mixed with the nations without distinction, they perish and lose the testimony of the truth: like Cain, who killed his righteous brother in envy and pride, receiving a mark so that no one should kill him. This can also be understood, not unfittingly, in Psalm 58, where Christ speaks in the person of his body and says: “My God has shown me among my enemies: do not kill them, lest at any time they forget your law.” For in those enemies of the Christian faith it is shown to the Gentiles how Christ was prophesied: lest perhaps, having seen the prophecies fulfilled with such manifestness, they should think those same Scriptures had been invented by Christians, when things foretold of Christ were read out which are seen to have been fulfilled. So the books are brought forward by the Jews, and thus God shows us among our enemies; whom he therefore did not kill, that is, did not wholly destroy from the earth, lest they forget his law, which they remember by reading it and by observing some parts of it, though in a fleshly way, so that they bring judgment on themselves and provide testimony to us.