Sermons to the People 211.1–212.2

These holy days that we spend in the observance of Lent remind us to speak to you about brotherly concord, so that whoever has a complaint against another may end it, lest he himself be ended. Do not despise these things, my brothers. For since this mortal and fragile life, which is in peril amid so many earthly temptations and prays not to be submerged, cannot be without sins of some kind in any righteous person, there is one remedy by which we can live: that God our teacher taught us to say in the Prayer, “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.” We have made a pact and agreement with God, and we have signed the condition for paying the debt in the bond. We ask with full confidence to be forgiven, if we too forgive; but if we do not forgive, let us not think that our sins are forgiven us; let us not deceive ourselves. Let a man not deceive himself; God deceives no one. It is human to be angry; and would that we could not do even this. It is human to be angry; but your anger, born as a little sprig, ought not to be watered with suspicions and grow into the beam of hatred. For anger is one thing, hatred another. For often even a father is angry with his son, but does not hate his son: he is angry in order to correct him. If he is angry in order to correct, he is angry by loving. That is why it was said: “You see the speck in your brother's eye, but you do not see the beam in your own eye.” You blame anger in another, and you hold hatred in yourself. Compared with hatred, anger is a speck. But if you nourish a speck, it will be a beam. If you pluck it out and throw it away, it will be nothing.

If you noticed, when the letter of blessed John was read, its sentence ought to have frightened you. For he says: “The darkness has passed away; the true light is already shining.” Then he went on to add: “Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is in darkness until now.” But perhaps someone thinks that this darkness is like that which is suffered by those shut up in prisons. Would that it were! And yet no one wants to be in such darkness. But in the darkness of prisons even the innocent can be shut up. For the martyrs were shut up in such darkness. Darkness was poured all around them, and light shone in their hearts. In that darkness of prison they did not see with their eyes, but with love of brotherhood they saw God. Do you want to know what kind of darkness this is of which it is said, “Whoever hates his brother is in darkness until now”? In another place he says: “Whoever hates his brother is a murderer.” Whoever hates his brother walks, goes out, goes in, goes about, burdened by no chains, shut up in no prison; yet he is bound by guilt. Do not think he is without a prison: his prison is his heart. When you hear, “Whoever hates his brother is in darkness until now,” then lest perhaps you despise such darkness, he adds and says: “Whoever hates his brother is a murderer.” You hate your brother, and you walk about unconcerned? And you are unwilling to be reconciled, although God gives you time for this very purpose? See, you are already a murderer, and you are still alive: if you had the Lord angry with you, you would be snatched away suddenly with your hatred of your brother. God spares you; spare yourself; be reconciled with your brother. But perhaps you want to, and he does not? Let that be enough for you. You have reason to grieve for him: you have freed yourself. If you want to be reconciled and he does not, say it without anxiety: “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.”

Perhaps you have sinned against him, you want to be reconciled with him, you want to say to him: Brother, forgive me for sinning against you. He will not forgive, he will not release the debt: what you owe him, he will not release to you. Let him watch out when he has to pray. When he who would not forgive you what perhaps you sinned against him comes to prayer, what will he do? Let him say, “Our Father, who are in heaven.” Let him say it, let him go on: “Hallowed be your name.” Say further: “Your kingdom come.” Go on: “Your will be done, on earth as in heaven.” Walk on further: “Give us today our daily bread.” You have said it; look at what follows, lest perhaps you want to skip over it and say something else. There is no way you can get past; there you are held. Say it, then, and say it truly; or, if you have no reason to say, “Forgive us our debts,” do not say it. And then where is what the same apostle said: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us”? But if the consciousness of your frailty bites you, and the abundance of iniquity everywhere in this world, then say, “Forgive us our debts.” But look at what follows. For you would not forgive your brother his sin, and you are going to say, “As we also forgive our debtors.” Or are you not going to say it? If you are not going to say it, you will receive nothing; but if you say it, you will say something false. So say it, and say it truly. How will you say it truly, you who would not release your brother's sin?

I have warned him; now I console you, whoever you are, if indeed there is such a one, who said to your brother, Forgive me for sinning against you: if you said it with your whole heart, with true humility, not with feigned love, as God sees in your heart the place from which you said it, and he would not forgive you, do not be anxious. You are both his servants; you have a Lord. You owe your fellow servant; he would not forgive you: appeal to the Lord of you both. What the Lord has forgiven you, let the servant exact if he can. I say something else. I have warned, then, him who would not forgive his brother when his brother asks to be forgiven, to do what he did not want to do, lest when he prays he not receive what he desires. I have warned also him who asked his brother's pardon for his sin and did not receive it, to be without anxiety before his Lord about what he did not obtain from his brother. There is something else to warn about. Your brother sinned against you, and would not say to you, Forgive me for sinning against you. Such words abound: would that God would root them out of his field, that is, out of your hearts. For how many there are who know that they have sinned against their brothers and will not say, Forgive me! They were not ashamed to sin, and they are ashamed to ask; they were not ashamed of iniquity, and they are ashamed of humility. So I warn them first of all. All of you who are at odds with your brothers, and come back to yourselves and consider yourselves, and pass just judgment on yourselves inwardly in your hearts, and find that you should not have done what you did, should not have said what you said: ask pardon, brothers, of your brothers; do with your brothers what the Apostle says, “Forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you”: do it, do not be ashamed to ask pardon. I say this equally to all, men and women, lesser and greater, laity and clergy: I say it also to myself. Let us all hear, let us all fear. If we have sinned against our brothers, if we have received a further respite for living, we do not therefore die: for we are still alive, we are not yet condemned. While we live, let us do what the Father commands, who will be God the judge; and let us ask pardon of our brothers whom perhaps, by sinning against them, we have in some way offended, in some way hurt. There are persons who are lowly according to the rank of this world, who, if you ask their pardon, are lifted up into pride. This is what I mean: sometimes a master sins against his slave; for though the one is master and the other slave, yet both are servants of another, because both have been redeemed by the blood of Christ. Yet it seems hard that I should also command this, should enjoin this: that if perhaps a master sins against his slave by quarreling with him unjustly or beating him unjustly, he should say, Forgive me, grant me pardon. Not because he ought not to do it, but lest the slave begin to be proud. What then? Let him repent before the eyes of God, let him punish his heart before the eyes of God; and if he cannot say to the slave, because it is not fitting, Grant me pardon, let him speak to him gently. For gentle address is a request for pardon.

It remains for me to address those against whom others have sinned, where those who sinned against them have been unwilling to ask pardon. For I have already addressed those who were unwilling to grant pardon to brothers asking for it. Now, then, as I address you all, since these are holy days, so that your discords may not remain, I believe that some of you have thought in your hearts, you who know that you have some discord with your brothers, and you have found that it was not you who sinned against them but they against you. Though you do not speak to me now, since it is mine to speak in this place and yours to keep silent and listen, yet perhaps you speak in thought and say to yourselves: I want to be reconciled, but he hurt me, he sinned against me, and he will not ask pardon. What then? Am I going to say, Go to him and ask him for pardon yourself? Far from it. I do not want you to lie; I do not want you to say, Grant me pardon, when you know that you have not sinned against your brother. For what good does it do you to be your own accuser? Why should you seek to be forgiven by one whom you have not hurt, or against whom you have not sinned? It does you no good; I do not want you to do it. You know; you have examined the matter well; you know that he sinned against you, not you against him. I know, he says. In that sure knowledge let your conscience rest. Do not go to your brother who sinned against you and ask pardon of him of your own accord. There ought to be others among you, peacemakers, to rebuke him so that he first asks pardon of you: you only be ready to forgive, be wholly ready to forgive from the heart. If you are ready to forgive, you have already forgiven. You still have something to pray for: pray for him, that he may ask pardon of you; since you know that it harms him if he does not ask, pray for him that he may ask. Say to the Lord in your prayer: Lord, you know that I have not sinned against this brother of mine, but rather he against me, and that what he sinned against me harms him if he does not ask my pardon; with a good heart I ask that you forgive him.

See, I have told you what you ought to do with me above all during these days of your fasts, your observances, your continence: be reconciled with your brothers. Let me too rejoice in your peace, I who am saddened by your quarrels; so that, all forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another, we may keep Easter without anxiety and celebrate without anxiety the passion of him who owed no one anything and paid the price for debtors: I mean the Lord Jesus Christ, who sinned against no one, and against whom nearly the whole world sinned; and he did not exact punishments but promised rewards. Let us have him, then, as witness in our hearts, so that if we have sinned against anyone we ask pardon with a true heart; if anyone has sinned against us, let us be ready to grant pardon, and let us pray for our enemies. Let us not wait to be avenged, brothers. What is being avenged but feeding on another's evil? I know that people come every day, kneel, strike their foreheads on the ground, sometimes wet their faces with tears, and in such great humility and agitation say: Lord, avenge me, kill my enemy. By all means pray that he kill your enemy and save your brother: that he kill the enmity and save the nature. Pray in this way that God may avenge you: let the one who persecuted you perish, but let the one who is restored to you remain.

It is time for you to receive the Creed, in which is contained briefly, for the sake of eternal salvation, all that you believe. It is called symbolum by a certain likeness, the word being transferred; because merchants make a symbolum among themselves by which their partnership is held together by a pact of good faith. And your partnership is a commerce in spiritual things, so that you may be like traders seeking a good pearl. This is love, which will be poured out in your hearts through the Holy Spirit, who will be given to you. It is reached from faith, which is contained in this Creed: that you believe in God the Father almighty, invisible, immortal, king of the ages, creator of things visible and invisible; and whatever else either sound reason or the authority of holy Scripture says worthily of him. Nor should you separate the Son of God from this excellence. For these things are not said of the Father in such a way that they are foreign to him who said, “I and the Father are one,” and of whom the Apostle says, “Who, being in the form of God, did not think it robbery to be equal with God.” For robbery is the seizing of what belongs to another, whereas that equality is by nature. And so how should the Son not be almighty, through whom all things were made, since he is also the Power and Wisdom of God, of which it is written that, though she is one, she can do all things? He is also invisible by nature, in that very form in which he is equal to the Father. For the Word of God, which was in the beginning and was God, is invisible by nature; in which nature he also remains wholly immortal, that is, in every way unchangeable. For the human soul too is in a certain way called immortal; but there is no true immortality where there is such changeableness, by which it can both decline and advance. Hence its death is to be estranged from the life of God through the ignorance that is in it; its life is to run to the fountain of life, so as to see light in God's light. According to that life you too, by the grace of Christ, will come back to life from a certain death which you are renouncing. But the Word of God, who is the only-begotten Son, lives always unchangeably with the Father; he neither declines, because his abiding is not diminished, nor advances, because his perfection is not increased. He is also himself the creator of the ages, of things visible and invisible: for, as the Apostle says, “In him all things were founded in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether Thrones or Dominions or Principalities or Powers: all things were created in him and through him, and all things hold together in him.” But since he emptied himself, not losing the form of God but taking the form of a slave, through this form of a slave the invisible was seen: because he was born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary. In this form of a slave the almighty was made weak: because he suffered under Pontius Pilate. Through this form of a slave the immortal died: because he was crucified and buried. Through this form of a slave the king of the ages rose on the third day. Through this form of a slave the creator of things visible and invisible ascended into heaven, from which he never departed. Through this form of a slave he sits at the right hand of the Father, he who is the arm of the Father, of whom the prophet says, “And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” In this form of a slave he will come to judge the living and the dead; in it he willed to share the lot of the dead, though he is the life of the living. Through him the Holy Spirit was sent to us from the Father and from himself: the Spirit of the Father and the Son, sent by both, begotten by neither; the unity of both, equal to both. This Trinity is one God, almighty, invisible, king of the ages, creator of things visible and invisible. For we do not speak of three lords, or three almighties, or three creators, or of three in whatever else can be said of the excellence of God; because there are not three gods but one God. Although in this Trinity the Father is not the Son, and the Son is not the Father, and the Holy Spirit is neither the Son nor the Father; but the one is the Father of the Son, the other the Son of the Father, the other the Spirit of the Father and the Son. Believe, so that you may understand. For “unless you believe, you will not understand.” From this faith hope for grace, in which all your sins will be forgiven you. For by this you will be saved, not of yourselves: for it is the gift of God. After this death too, which passes upon all and is due to the oldness of the first man, hope also at the end for the resurrection of your bodies: not to the sufferings of pain, as the ungodly will rise; nor to the joys of fleshly desires, as fools think; but as the Apostle says, “It is sown a natural body, it will rise a spiritual body,” so that it no longer weighs down the soul, nor seeks any refreshment, because it will suffer no failing.

Here, then, I have paid you the short sermon on the whole Creed that was owed to you; in it you will recognize, when you hear the Creed, that everything has been briefly gathered in this sermon of ours. And you ought not in any way to write down the very words of the Creed in order to hold them, but to learn them thoroughly by hearing; and when you have learned them, not to write them down, but always to keep them in memory and go over them. For whatever you are going to hear in the Creed is contained in the divine writings of the holy Scriptures. But the fact that it is not permitted to write down what has been so gathered and reduced to a certain form is a reminder of God's promise, where, foretelling the New Testament through the prophet, he said: “This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord: putting my law in their mind, and I will write it on their heart.” To signify this, the Creed is learned by hearing, and is written not on tablets or on any material, but on the heart. He who has called you to his kingdom and glory will grant that, when you have been regenerated by his grace, it may be written also by the Holy Spirit on your hearts, so that you may love what you believe, and faith may work in you through love; and so you may please the Lord God, the giver of all good things, not by fearing punishment like slaves but by loving righteousness like free men. This, then, is the Creed, which has been made known to you through the Scriptures and the sermons of the Church; but in this short form the faithful are to stand firm in it and make progress.