Sermons to the People 21.1–21.10

"The righteous will rejoice in the Lord, and will hope in him, and all the upright of heart will be praised." This we certainly sing with voice and mouth. These words both the Christian conscience and the Christian tongue have said to the Lord: "The righteous will rejoice in the Lord," not in the world. "Light has risen for the righteous," it says elsewhere, "and joy for the upright of heart." Asking where the joy comes from, you hear here, "The righteous will rejoice in the Lord." "Light has risen for the righteous," it says elsewhere; and elsewhere, "Delight in the Lord, and he will give you the requests of your heart." What is announced to us? What is given? What is commanded? What is granted? That we should rejoice in the Lord. Who will rejoice in something he does not see? Or do we perhaps see the Lord? This we hold in promise: but now we walk by faith; as long as we are in the body, we are away from the Lord; by faith, not by sight. Then we shall come to sight, when what John likewise says is fulfilled: "Beloved, we are sons of God, and it has not yet appeared what we shall be: we know that when he appears we shall be like him, when we see him as he is." Then, therefore, there will be great and perfect joy, and then full gladness, where hope no longer suckles us but the reality feeds us. Yet even now, before the reality itself comes to us, before we come to the reality itself, let us rejoice in the Lord. For hope, whose reality will come afterwards, has no small joy. And in these temporal things, in joy not of the Lord but of the world, some love many things and have not yet attained what they love: and yet ardor runs on in hope; it does not yet hold the thing. For example, you love money: you would not run after it if you did not hope for it. You love a wife, not yet married but still to be married; and perhaps she is loved while to be married, and when married will be hated. Why this? Because once married she did not appear such as the mind painted her while she was to be married. But God does not become cheap when present, though he is loved when absent. For however much the human mind exaggerates to itself the good that God is, it falls short, it is far below; and necessarily attainment will find more than thought was forming. So we shall love more when we have seen, if we have been able to love even before we saw. Now, then, we love in hope. That is why it says, "The righteous will rejoice in the Lord." And immediately, because he does not yet see: "and will hope in him."

Yet we have the firstfruits of the Spirit, and perhaps from elsewhere too we draw near to him whom we love; and what we are going to eat and drink eagerly we now, though thinly, lick and taste beforehand. How do we prove this? For God, whom we are commanded to love, in whom we are commanded to rejoice, is not gold, or silver, or earth, or heaven, or this light of the sun, or whatever shines from the sky, or whatever gleams on earth flooded with light. God is no body; he is spirit. That is why, it says, "those who worship must worship in spirit and truth." Not in some place of body, because he is not a body: not as if on a high mountain, so that you think you draw near to God by the height of the mountain. "The Lord is indeed high, but he looks on lowly things; and he knows lofty things from afar"; lowly things not from afar. Certainly he is high, and surely, if he knows lofty things from afar, he ought to notice lowly things from still further off. If by his loftiness he is far from lofty things, so that he knows them from afar, how much more, someone says, has his loftiness withdrawn far from lowly things? It is not so. For God is high, and looks on lowly things. How does he look on them? "The Lord is near to all those who have crushed their heart." So do not look for a high mountain from which you may seem nearer to him. If you lift yourself up, he withdraws far from you: if you humble yourself, he bends down to you. The tax collector stood far off, and so God drew near him more readily: "he did not even dare to lift his eyes to heaven," and he already had with him him who had made heaven. How, then, do we rejoice in the Lord, if the Lord is so far from us? That he is not far, and that he is far, is your doing. Love, and he will draw near: love, and he will dwell in you. "The Lord is near; have no anxiety." Do you want to see how he is with you if you love? "God is love." Why do the fancies of your thought flit far and wide, and you say to yourself, "What do you think God is? What do you think God is like?" Whatever you imagine, he is not; whatever you grasp in thought, he is not. For if he were that, he could not be grasped in thought. But so that you may receive something to taste: "God is love." You are going to say to me, "What do you think love is?" Love is that by which we love. What do we love? An ineffable good, a beneficent good, the good that is creator of all goods. Let him delight you, from whom you have whatever delights you. I do not mean sin: for sin is the only thing you do not have from him. Apart from sin, whatever else you have, you have from him.

So do not take what I said, "Let him delight you, from whom you have whatever delights you," as referring to sin, and say: "See, sin delights me; do I have sin from God?" First see whether perhaps sin does not delight you, but something else delights you, in which you commit sin. So by loving a creature inordinately, against honorable use, against what is lawful, against the law and will of the Creator himself, you sin by loving a creature. You do not love sin itself: but by loving badly what you love, you are snared by sin. You go for the bait in the net, and without knowing it you feed on sin; and you defend yourself like this: "If it is a sin to drink much, why did the Lord institute wine? If it is a sin to love gold" (I am a lover of gold, not of the Creator) "God is the creator of gold; why did he create what it is bad to love?" So too with the other things you love badly, in which there is all luxury, where no shameful acts are committed: attend, look, consider that every creature of God is good, and there is no sin there except that you use it badly. Hear this, then, O man. You say, "Why did God institute what he forbids me to love? He should not have instituted it, and there would be nothing for me to love; he should not have instituted a creature which he commands me not to love; and there would be nothing for me to love and be condemned for loving." If the creature itself which you love badly, because you do not even love yourself, could have a voice, it would answer you: "You would not want God to have made me, so that there would be nothing for you to love; now see how unjust you are, and in your very words you are caught most unjust: you would want God to make you, who is above you, and you would not want him to make another good thing." What God made for you is good: but some are great goods, others small goods; some earthly goods, others spiritual goods, others temporal goods; yet all are goods, because the Good made good things. That is why in a certain place of the divine Scriptures it is said, "Set love in order in me." God has made you something good; under himself he has made something lower, and under you; you are under one thing, you are above another: do not abandon the higher good and bend yourself to the lower good. Be upright, so that you may be praised: because "all the upright of heart will be praised." For how do you sin, except because you handle in a disordered way the things you received for use? Use lower things well, and you will rightly enjoy the higher good.

Now hear, and examine your own knowledge: and question yourself who handle things, and the things you handle. See, if in your business you put silver before gold, lead before silver, dust before lead, will you not be judged utterly mad by all your partners, if perhaps you are a merchant, and be removed from their partnership, and be called ruinous, and perhaps even in need of treatment for your whole head? For what else would all your partners say, when you said, "Silver is dearer than gold," or "Silver is better than gold"? Will they not cry out: "Madman, you are deceived; what is wrong with you, putting silver before gold?" And no one says to you, "What is wrong with you, putting gold before God?" "How," he says, "do I put gold before God? If through some madness I put silver before gold, I am called mad because, of two kinds, both of which I see, both of which I look at, both of which I handle, I put the cheaper before the dearer: how do I put gold before God? I see gold, I do not see God." You will not excuse yourself by this either. Why do you love silver? Because it is dear, because it is worth a high price. Why gold more? Because it is dearer. Silver dear, gold dearer: God is love itself.

See, I will mention something of God's gift, so that I may more quickly convict you of how you put gold before God; though you see gold and do not see God, and so do not think you put it first, because no one would want to put a thing he does not see before a thing he sees. See, I mention something. What do you think? Is faith silver? Is it gold? Is it a coin? Is it cattle? Is it land? Is it the sky? It is none of these, and yet it is something. Not only is it something, but it is something great. For the moment I am not speaking of that higher faith by which you are called one of the faithful, when you approach the table of your Lord, answering the words of faith out of faith: for the moment I set that aside a little. I will speak of that faith which is also commonly called faith: not that great faith which your God commands you, but the faithfulness which you demand from your slave. I speak of that very faithfulness, because your Lord also commands it of you: that you cheat no one, that you keep faith in business, that you keep faith with your wife in bed. Your God commands you this faithfulness too. What is this faithfulness? Certainly you do not see it: if you do not see it, why do you shout when it is broken toward you? By your shout I convict you of seeing it. You were saying: "How do I put gold before God? I see gold, I do not see God." See, you see gold, you do not see faithfulness. Or, what is truer, you see faithfulness; but when you demand it, you see it; when it is demanded of you, you do not want to see it? With open eyes you shout, "Give back the faith you promised": with closed eyes you shout, "I promised you nothing." In both cases open your eyes. Unjust man, do not lose faith but your injustice itself: give back what you demand. You lead your slave, to be manumitted, by the hand into the church. There is silence, your document is read out, or the declaration of your wish is made. You say you are manumitting your slave because he has kept faith with you in everything. This you love, this you honor, this you reward with the gift of freedom: whatever you can, you do; you make him free, because you cannot make him everlasting. Your God cries out to you, and convicts you by your slave: he says to you in your heart, "You have brought your slave from your house to my house; you want to bring him back from my house to your house free: why do you serve badly in my house? You give him what you can: I promise you what I can: you make free a slave who keeps faith with you; I make you everlasting, if you keep faith with me." Why do you still argue against me in your mind? Give back to your Lord what you praise in your slave. Or do you perhaps claim so much for yourself that you think yourself worthy to have a faithful slave, of whom you say, "I bought him"; and I am not worthy to have a faithful servant, whom I created? Your Lord says these things to you within, where no one hears but you; and he who speaks to you is he who speaks true things. For what is truer than this speech? Do not grow deaf. See, you love faithfulness in your slave; certainly you do not see faithfulness: why do you love it in another, and all that I said in another, and in a slave whom you bought with money, yet did not create? Your Lord deals with you by a double bond. He both created you and bought you. "Before you existed," he says to you, "I made you; when you had sold yourself under sin, I redeemed you." To manumit your slave, you break his tablets: God does not break your tablets. Your tablets are the Gospel, where the blood is by which you were bought: they remain, they are read daily, you are reminded of your condition, your price is recalled to you.

If your slave whom you are manumitting did not show you faithfulness, nor make himself worthy of your manumission by keeping faith, and you found him in some frauds in your house, what would you shout? "Wicked slave, you do not keep faith with me? Do you not know that I bought you? Do you not know that I paid out my blood for you?" You shout as loud as you can, and beat the sky with resentful cries: "I gave my blood for you, wicked slave." And all who hear say, "He is right." If your slave himself dared to answer you as you inveighed and shouted like this, would you not blush if he said to you: "What blood, I ask you, did you give for me? When you bought me, you did not even have yourself bled." But you call your money your blood. You love your money so much that you call it your blood. Your Lord convicts you by your own words. You call your money your blood, and so you demand faithfulness from your purchased slave, because for him you gave, not blood, of course, but coin or gold: "Recall what I gave. Read your tablets, if you do not recall it; read the death of the Saviour for you, the lance of the one who pierced, the price paid by the Redeemer. A man too can, while living, give his blood by having a vein opened, as I said, and still live: what your Lord says to you is more: Blood was not drawn from me while I lived; I bought you with my blood; I add, I bought you with my death." What have you to say? Give back to your Lord the faithfulness you demand from your slave. You see gold, and you see faithfulness too: you would not demand it if you did not see it; you would not praise it if you did not see it; you would not reward it with freedom if you did not see it: but gold you see with the eyes of the flesh, faithfulness you see with the eyes of the heart. The better the eyes of the heart are, the better is what you see with the eyes of the heart. But to this faithfulness, which your Lord commands you, you prefer gold, and you do not return what was entrusted to you, and say, "You gave me nothing": or to one to whom you entrusted nothing, you say, "Return what I entrusted to you." You do not give what you received, you claim back what you did not give. See, acquire, take, and heap up mud for yourself. Why do you press, saying, "Give back what you were not entrusted," denying what you received entrusted to you? Take, gather ruinous gains: see, you have filled your chest, you have acquired much gold; examine the chest of your heart: you have lost faith.

Return, then, if you have felt anything, if you have blushed, if you have corrected what had been crooked and bent: return, delight in the Lord, rejoice in the Lord. Rejoice in the things the Lord has commanded, so that you may rejoice in the Lord. Rejoice in faith, rejoice in hope, rejoice in love, rejoice in mercy, rejoice in hospitality, rejoice in chastity. All these are goods, treasures of the inner man; jewels not of your chest but of your conscience. Love to be rich in these, riches you cannot lose even in shipwreck; so that if you come out naked, you will be full. For so you come out upright of heart, so that you may be praised, not blaming your Lord if anything happens to you in this world, and praising the scourge of the Father whose inheritance you await. Flee under the hand that corrects. Do not turn away from discipline, because he who corrects you cannot err. He who made you knows what to do with you. Or do you perhaps think your maker so unskilled that he knew how to make you and forgets what to do with you? Before you existed, he thought of you: for if he had not thought of you, you would never have existed. So he thought of you before you existed, so that you might exist; and now that you exist, remain, live, serve him, will he despise you and look down on you? "He has looked down on me," you say: "I have prayed, and he has not heard me." What if you were asking for something that you would have received to your harm, if you had received it? "I wept before him, and he did not give it to me." O senseless child, what did you weep for? To receive carnal happiness, temporal happiness, earthly happiness. What if this happiness, which you longed and asked for, and for which you wept, would throw you headlong? A little while ago I was speaking of your slave; now take a comparison from your son. Your little son cries before you for you to lift him onto your horse: do you listen? Do you grant it? Are you hard, or rather merciful? What is it, tell me, what counsel are you acting on? Certainly this is the counsel of love, who doubts it? For him, when grown, you are keeping the whole house; while he is little and crying, you do not lift him onto the horse. Everything you have, both the house and whatever is in the house, both the field and whatever is in the field, you are keeping for him; and yet you do not lift the little one, crying, onto the horse. Let him cry as much as he likes, let him cry all day; you do not grant it, and you do not grant it out of mercy, and if you granted it, you would be cruel. See, then, think that your Lord does this to you when you ask for unsuitable things and do not receive them. For perhaps want will train you, plenty will corrupt you. You seek the plenty of corruption, when perhaps the want of training is necessary. Leave it to your God, who knows what to give you, what to take from you. For if he gives you what you ask for wrongly, perhaps he gives it in anger. Hear examples from the Law. He heard in anger the Israelites who craved the cravings of belly and throat: he did not, in his favor, hear Paul saying, "Take from me the thorn of the flesh."

So delight in the Lord, rejoice in the Lord, not in the world. For that man rejoiced in the Lord who, when he had lost all the joy of the world, still had the Lord left to rejoice in: there remained to him within the simple, perfect and unchangeable joy of his heart. What he had, he possessed; he was not possessed by it; but he was possessed by the Lord: those things he trod underfoot, on him he hung: when the things he trod underfoot were taken away, he clung to him on whom he hung. See, then, what it is to rejoice in the Lord. "The Lord gave," "the Lord" (see the joy), "the Lord has taken away": has he taken away himself? What he gave he took away; he who gave offered himself; he rejoices in the Lord. So: "The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away; as it pleased the Lord, so it has been done: blessed be the name of the Lord." Why should what pleased the Lord displease the servant? "I have lost gold," he says, "I have lost my household, I have lost my cattle, I have lost whatever I had: him from whom I have them I have not lost. I have lost what he had given; I have not lost him whose I am. He himself is my delight, he himself my riches." But why? Because he was not perverse, not upside down, did not neglect him who is above him and love the things that are below him. For that is perversity: using the creature badly.

Why do you accuse him who gave gold, you who are rightly accused of loving gold badly? "Have gold," God says to you; "I gave it to you; use it well." You want to be adorned with gold; adorn the gold rather: you want honor, you want distinction from gold; give distinction to the gold, do not be a disgrace to the gold. The whoremonger has gold, the fornicator, the debauchee: he puts on showy games, gives insane gifts to actors; he gives nothing to the hungry poor: that is no distinction to gold. Does not the one who rightly attends to this say, "I am sorry for the gold that has fallen to that man; oh, if only I had it!" And you, if you had the gold: for now you say, "I am sorry for the gold that has fallen to this man; oh, if only I had it!" What would you do? "I would take in strangers, feed the needy, clothe the naked, ransom captives." You speak good things before you have it: see that you speak so when you have it. If you are such, the gold will be your adornment. And if you use gold so, because you love more him who created gold, you will be upright, loving higher things more, using lower things rightly; and you will delight in the Lord, you will rejoice in the Lord as a righteous man. There will be in you no accusation of the Creator, but thanksgiving to the Redeemer.