Sermons to the People 24.1–25.8

Thanks be to the Lord our God, and abundant praise to the God to whom a hymn is fitting in Zion. Thanks to him to whom, with devotion of heart and mouth, we have sung, “O God, who is like you?”: because we feel his holy love deep within our hearts; because you fear him as Lord and love him as Father. Thanks to him who is desired before he is seen, who is felt as present and hoped for as one to come. Thanks to him whose fear love does not drive out, and whose love fear does not hinder. Him we bless, him we honor, both for ourselves and in ourselves. For “the temple of God is holy, which you are.” See now how greatly he lives, or how he lives, when the stones of his temple live like this. Think, brothers, what you are saying, and to whom you are saying, “O God, who is like you?” Living stones say to the one who dwells in them, “O God, who is like you?” Let the whole creation come before your hearts: the earth and whatever is on the earth, the sea and whatever is in the sea, the air and whatever is in the air, heaven and whatever is in heaven: “He spoke, and they were made; he commanded, and they were created.” So, “O God, who is like you?”: let every heart say it, let every obedient tongue say it, let every devout conscience say it, let it say it without fear: “O God, who is like you?” For it says it to one of whom it is not ashamed. This is worthy; this befits living stones.

For would that the dead stones might feel in themselves the mercy of the living stones! I call dead not the stones from which these buildings rise, nor those on which the craftsmen’s iron works, nor those that man has carved to be gods (or rather, man carved them to be called gods and not to be gods); I do not mean these when I say dead stones: I mean that men are dead stones, men whom their gods resemble. Living stones are those whom the apostle Peter addresses when he says, “And you, brothers, like living stones, are built together into the holy temple of God.” Would, then, my brothers, that the dead stones might feel in themselves the mercy of the living stones! For what are we busy about? What do we range over in the narrowness or the breadth of our heart? What do we care about, what are we eager for, except to free a stone from a stone? For living stones have eyes and see, have ears and hear, have hands and work, have feet and walk: for they know their maker. But the dead stones know their stones; they attend to their gods, worship them, and are known by them; they offer sacrifice, and themselves become a sacrifice to the devil. If they, brothers, had eyes to see and ears to hear, what a thing it would be to see the prophecies of Christ fulfilled! What a thing to attend to the truthful books, and to oracles that do not deceive! But why do they not see? Why do they not hear? Because here too the prophecy says, “Let those who make them become like them, and those who trust in them.” Are they then without hope, and to be given up? Far from it! And what is to be hoped for from the dead stones? What do you think, but what we already hold in writing: “God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham”?

And so, dearly beloved, since you know to whom we have said, “O God, who is like you?”: one of whom we are not ashamed, whose inscription we read not on a stone but carry in our heart; whose name is known to all, and who lives in believers, dwells in those who submit to him, and overthrows the proud. Since we know to whom we have said, “O God, who is like you?”, let not the men whom God made move us to hatred of them, but let whatever man himself has made badly in a man whom God made well move us to hatred of it. “Man” is one name. Look for the maker of this creature: it is God. Is God the creator of man only? Is he not the maker of cattle, and fish, and bird, and angel, and heaven, and earth, and stars, and sun, and moon, and of all things founded and ordered above and below, lowest and highest, joined by the bond of unity: of all these, is not God the maker? But man he made in his image and likeness. Man is called a certain likeness; and how great a likeness, to how great a one? What, to whom? Man to God? “What is man, that you are mindful of him?” Let us then, made in his image and likeness, say … “O God, who is like you?” For the Scripture adds, “Remember that we are dust.” So far are you from being like God. Man was made after the likeness of God; but the likeness itself is so distant that it is not fitting to compare it. And yet the heart of a man, even of a Christian, which would never say, “To Man, the god,” reads with pleasure, “To Hercules, the god.” The inscription does not speak; but it is read: “To Hercules, the god.” Of whom was this said? Let him say himself of whom it was said. Both are dumb, both senseless: above, a lie; below, a fabrication. An inscription that accuses its writer and confounds its worshiper. An inscription that does not commend the stone as a god but shows the man to be a fool. An inscription that puts the name of a god on a fabrication, and blots the name of its worshiper out of the book of the living. What particle of sense does it feel in itself?

Yet since God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham, let him attend there to what he made in man. Let God himself, to whom we said, “O God, who is like you?”, attend in man to what he himself made, and blot out what man himself has done against him who made man. Let him strike and heal, kill and make alive. For to him to whom he said, “Lord, who is like you?”, he went on to add, “Do not be silent, and do not be gentle, O God.” What is this? In that song, my brothers, have we provoked God to anger, when we said to him, “Do not be silent, and do not be gentle, O God”? Surely he is either the one who sent, or the very one who came and said, “Learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart.” The Son of God, Christ, is gentle and humble of heart. What then? He said, “Learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart”; and have we said to him, “Do not be silent, and do not be gentle, O God”? But let him answer us: “O man, is it not enough that you do not learn from me to be gentle, but you also want to lead me not to be gentle?” See, brothers, pay attention, help us, so that in his name we may get out of these straits (help us with devout attention and chaste prayer). The divine words seem to quarrel: they are thought to sound contrary to each other, unless understanding is present, and we receive it from the very one to whom we said, “O God, who is like you?”: let us receive what he himself said, “I will give you understanding.” We know this: “My peace I give to you.” Christ says it, so that Christians may have peace among themselves. How will they imitate it? How will they listen, if the divine words themselves cannot have peace among themselves? Pay attention; see what sounds like an echo of contraries: “Come to me,” and “Learn from me.” What then? First, who calls? Whom does he call? To what does he call? Hear who calls: “I confess to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and revealed them to little ones. Yes, Father, for so it was pleasing before you. All things have been handed over to me by my Father.” See who calls. “All things have been handed over to me by my Father. For no one has known the Son except the Father; and no one knows the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal him.” Immense greatness, and ineffable height! “All things,” he says, “have been handed over to me by my Father.” I alone know, I am known by one alone. What, are we left out? Do we not know? And where is “to whom the Son wills to reveal him”?

Your spirit and zeal for the faith, the ardor of your love, and the abundance of your zeal for the house of God have shown themselves in your shouts, which you have as clear enough witnesses of your heart. Allow the zeal also of the few faithful of God by whom you are governed to show itself in regard to this wish of yours. For you, brothers, are the people of God, as he himself said, and the sheep of his pasture. You have, in the name of God, shepherds: servants of the Shepherd and members of the Shepherd. The mind and will of a multitude for doing anything can show itself in shouts like these; but the care of the few for you must be shown not by shouts but by deeds. And so, brothers, since you have already done your part by acclaiming, allow it to be proved to you whether we too do our part by acting. We have tested you; test us, whether, after those shouts that witness to your heart and zeal, we prove sluggish in doing what ought to be done. Far be it from us that you should be found approved and we reprobate. But since the will to act on what you acclaimed is one, both yours and ours, while the manner of acting cannot be the same, we think, dearly beloved, that the will should be accepted from you, and the plan for carrying out your will be awaited from us. So that the members of Christ may not be in discord, let all that are in his body fulfill their duties: let the eye placed on high do what belongs to the eye; the ear, what belongs to the ear; the hand, what belongs to the hand; the foot, what belongs to the foot; so that there may be no divisions in the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. And so we rejoice and congratulate your Charity, because you obeyed our holy lord and colleague, your bishop, in what he said to you this morning. Follow this; do not depart from this way, lest you fall. For God greatly helps what you want, if you do what he has commanded. For what, as I had begun to say, is every man? Or what is the life of men but, as it is written, a vapor appearing for a little while? Consider, then, brothers, your frailty, your lowliness, the condition of the flesh, the fleeting passing of this world; and see that it will be well with you then, if your whole hope is in him in whom alone it can be firmly placed. But how will our hope be there, unless we obey his precepts?

Do we say, “Do not want what you want”? No, we even give thanks that you want what God wants. For that all the superstition of pagans and Gentiles should be abolished God wills, God has commanded, God has foretold, God has already begun to fulfill, and in many places of the world has already largely fulfilled. If our will had begun from this city, so that you were seeking to have the superstitions of demons abolished here first, it might perhaps be an arduous labor, yet not one to despair of. But as it is, if these things were done effectively where they began to be done, when no examples had gone before, how much more effectively do we believe that they can be accomplished here too in the name of the Lord, with the help of his right hand, when examples that have gone before are already reported? Certainly you shouted here: “As at Rome, so at Carthage!” If the thing has gone ahead in the head of the nations, will the members not follow? Consider, brothers; look into the books of the Gentiles themselves; hear it from those in whom remnants of that unhappiness have remained; by hearing or by reading, learn their literature; and see that both those gods and these are called Roman. So these gods are called Roman. And when Christians were being compelled, under the raging assault of the pagans, to worship them, and, refusing, endured their cruelty to the shedding of their blood, the whole fault of the martyrs, whose blood was being shed, seemed to be that they would not worship the Roman gods, that they rejected the ceremonies for the Roman gods, that they did not pray to the Roman gods; and the whole assault, the whole hatred, arose only from the name of the Roman gods. If, then, the Roman gods have failed at Rome, why have they remained here? Attend to these things, then, brothers, these things; I have said them; restrain these things. Roman gods, Roman gods, Roman gods! If the Roman gods have failed at Rome, why have they remained here? If they could walk, they would say that they had fled from there to here. But they have not fled: they have remained there, at Rome. The one who was once called the god Hercules is no longer at Rome. But here he even wanted to have a gilded beard. I have plainly made a mistake, because I said “he wanted.” For what does a senseless stone want? He, then, wanted nothing, could do nothing. But those who wanted him gilded were put to shame by his shaving. And so some petition or other crept up on the new judge. What did he do? He certainly did not bring it about that a stone should be honored by a Christian; rather, a Christian was brought into contact with that superstition in order to shave it. It did not move him to compliance but stirred him to punishment. Brothers, I think it was more disgraceful for Hercules to have his beard shaved than to have his head cut off. What was set up with their error has been taken away with their disgrace. Hercules is commonly called the god of strength: all his strength was in his beard. He shone to his own harm: because he did not shine with the Lord’s light, he shone not from light but from a grove.

Let them be silent, then; let them see now to which God the faithful read and say, “O God, who is like you? Do not be silent, and do not be gentle, O God.” This is what I had undertaken: how he is not gentle, overturning not men but errors. He is not gentle, so he is angry; if he is gentle, then he also has mercy. He is angry and has mercy: he is angry to strike, he has mercy to heal; he is angry to put to death, he has mercy to make alive. He does these things in one and the same man. Not as though putting some to death and making others alive: but in the very same people he is both angry and gentle. He is angry at errors, he is gentle when conduct is corrected. “I will strike, and I will heal; I will kill, and I will make alive.” The one man, Saul, later Paul, he both threw down and raised up: he threw down the unbeliever, raised up the believer; threw down the persecutor, raised up the preacher. If he is not angry, how is it that Hercules’ beard was shaved? For he did this through his faithful, through his Christians, through the authorities ordained by him and now subject to the yoke of Christ. And so, brothers, receive this with a glad mind, and with the Lord’s help hope now that the rest will go more prosperously.

When we were singing to God, we said to him, “Blessed is the man whom you instruct, O Lord, and teach out of your law.” So God’s Gospel sounded, and Zacchaeus gave alms. Learn. For what better law of God is there than the holy Gospel? For it is the law of the New Testament, of which you heard when the prophet was read: “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, and I will accomplish upon the house of Jacob a new testament: not according to the testament which I established for their fathers when I led them out of the land of Egypt.” There the testament was promised, here it is rendered: promised through the prophet, rendered through the Lord of the prophets. Read that testament which is called the Old, and see. The law of God was given then too: read it, or listen when it is read, and see what was promised there. A land of earth was promised to you, a land flowing with milk and honey; but still earth. Yet if we understand it spiritually (since that land did not literally flow with milk and honey), there is another land that flows with milk and honey: the land of which it is said, “You are my hope, my portion in the land of the living.” For this is the land of the dying. Do you seek milk and honey? “Taste and see how sweet the Lord is.” His grace is signified by the name of milk and honey: it is sweet and nourishing. This grace was prefigured in the Old Testament and revealed in the New.

Finally, that Law, because of those who think carnally and seek such rewards from God, and want to worship God for the sake of the things promised there, deserved to hear from the apostle Paul that it “gives birth to slavery.” Why? Because it is understood carnally by the Jews. For understood spiritually, it is the Gospel. So it gives birth to slavery. Whom? Those who serve God for the sake of earthly goods. When these are present, they give thanks; when they are lacking, they blaspheme. For those who serve God for such things cannot serve him with a true heart. They look at those who do not serve our God: they see them having what they themselves serve God for; and they say in their heart, “What good does it do me that I serve God? Do I have as much as that man who blasphemes every day?” This one prays and goes hungry; that one blasphemes and belches. Whoever pays attention to such things is a man, a man of the Old Testament. But whoever worships God in the New Testament ought to hope for a new inheritance, not an old one. If you hope for a new inheritance, pass beyond the earth, tread on the tops of the mountains: that is, despise the loftiness of the proud. But when you have despised it and trodden on it, be humble, lest you fall from the height. Hear: “Lift up your heart”; but to the Lord, not against the Lord. All the proud have their heart lifted up, but against the Lord. But if you want truly to have your heart lifted up, have it lifted to the Lord. For if you have your heart lifted up to the Lord, he holds your heart so that it does not fall to the earth.

Blessed, then, is the man: “Blessed is the man whom you instruct, O Lord.” See, I speak; see, I cry out; see, I explain. Who hears me? I know who hears me: “Blessed is the man whom you instruct, O Lord”: the one to whom God speaks in the heart, even when I am silent; he is the blessed one whom you instruct, O Lord, and teach out of your law. What follows? Up to here we sang: “And teach him out of your law.” “That you may make him calm in the evil days, until a pit is dug for the sinner.” He is the man who is instructed by the Lord; he is the one who learns from the Lord out of God’s law, who is made calm in the evil days, until a pit is dug for the sinner. Hear what this means. The days are evil. Are we not spending evil days here, ever since we were cast out of paradise? Our elders too lamented their days, and their grandfathers lamented their days. No people have been pleased with the days they lived through. But the days of their elders please later generations; and those in turn were pleased with days which they themselves did not feel, and that is why they were pleased. For what is present is sharply felt. I do not say it comes closer; but it touches the heart every day. Almost every year, when we feel the cold, we say, “It has never been so cold”; “It has never been so hot.” He who makes it always makes it. But “blessed is the man whom you instruct, O Lord, that you may make him calm in the evil days, until a pit is dug for the sinner.”

Are these days evil which the circuit of the sun drives on? Evil men make the days evil; and almost the whole world is like that. Among crowds of the wicked the few grains of wheat groan. Let us turn back to the just themselves. Those others are evil and make the days evil: what of the just themselves? Are they not in evil days even within themselves, besides suffering the evil men among whom they groan? Even within themselves, I say: when they pay attention to themselves, go down into themselves, consider themselves well, they find evil days in themselves. They do not want war, they want peace; and who does not? And though all do not want war, and all want peace, even the one who lives justly turns his eyes back on himself and finds war within himself. Ask me what war. “Blessed is the man whom you instruct, O Lord, and teach out of your law.” See, a man asks me what war the just man suffers within himself: teach him out of your law; let the apostle speak: “The flesh desires against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh.” And where am I to throw off the flesh, if the trumpet sounds for war, if, God forbid, an enemy bursts in? A man flees, and drags his own war with him wherever he goes. I do not mean if he is evil; I mean precisely if he is good, if he lives justly: he finds in himself what the apostle says, “The flesh desires against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh.” In this war how are the days good?

So the days are evil; but let us be made calm. What does “let us be made calm” mean? That we are not angry at the divine judgment. Let us say to him: “It is good for me that you humbled me, that I might learn your justifications.” You dashed me out of paradise, you cast me out of blessedness: I am in hardship, I am in groaning, “my groaning is not hidden from you.” But “it is good for me that you humbled me, that I might learn your justifications.” In the evil days I learn to seek good days. What are the good days? Do not look for them now: believe me, or rather believe with me, you will not find them. The evil days will pass, and the good will come: but they will come as good for the good, and worse for the wicked.

For I too ask you: “Who is the man who wants life?” I know that everyone’s heart answers me, “Who is there who does not want life?” I add: “And loves to see good days?” You all answer, “Who is there who does not love to see good days?” You answer well: you want life, you want good days. Certainly, when I was saying, “Who is the man who wants life?”, every man answers me, “I.” “Who is the man who wants to see good days?” Does not each of you say in silence, “I”? Hear what follows: “Keep your tongue from evil.” Now say, “I.” You ask for pardon: now let me find you. The past has passed: your tongue may have been evil; you may have been a whisperer, a backbiter, a false accuser, a reviler; you may have been all these. Let them pass with the evil days; do not you pass with the evil days. For there is something to hold on to, so that you do not pass away. Human life runs like a river; the evil days run like a river. Hold on to the wood, so that you are not swept away. See, the river runs: “For all flesh is grass, and all the glory of flesh like the flower of grass.” It rushes on, passes; the grass withers, the flower falls. What do I hold on to? “The word of the Lord abides forever.”

So keep your tongue from evil, and your lips, so that they speak no deceit. You who wanted life, or who want life and good days: turn aside from evil and do good. Seek peace, which we all long for, in this mortality of the flesh, in this frailty of the flesh, in this most lying vanity. All of you, seek peace. “Seek peace, and pursue it.” Where is it? Where shall I pursue it? Which way did it pass? Which way did it pass, so that I may follow? It passed through you, but it did not remain in you. To whom am I speaking? To the human race: not to each one of you, but to the human race. Through the human race that peace passed: as it passed by, the blind man in yesterday’s reading cried out. And where did it go? First see what peace is, and see where it went, and pursue it. What is peace? Hear the apostle; he was saying of Christ, “He is our peace, who made both one.” Peace, then, is Christ. Where did he go? He was crucified and buried, he rose from the dead, he ascended into heaven. See where peace went. Lift up your heart. How shall I pursue it? Lift up your heart. Hear how you may follow. Every day, indeed, you hear it briefly, when it is said to you, “Lift up your heart”; think of it more deeply from there, and you will follow. Yet hear it more fully too, so that you may follow true peace, your peace, the peace that endured war for you; the peace that, while enduring war for you, prayed for the enemies of peace and said as he hung, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” There was war, and peace flowed from the tree. It flowed; but then what? He ascended into heaven: seek peace. And how will you follow? Hear the apostle: “If you have risen with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God; set your mind on the things above, not on the things on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God; when Christ your life appears, then you too will appear with him in glory.” See the good days: let us long for them; for this let us live, for this let us pray, for this let us give alms.

Now see, by God’s favor, it is winter: think of the poor, how the naked Christ may be clothed. When the Gospel was read, did we not all call Zacchaeus blessed, when Christ looked up at him in the tree, intent on seeing him pass by? For when could he have hoped to have him staying in his house? When he said to him, “Come down, Zacchaeus; today I must stay in your house,” I heard your groans of joy. It was as though you had all been in Zacchaeus and had received Christ; so the heart of every one of you said, “O blessed Zacchaeus! The Lord entered his house. O blessed man! Can it happen like that to us? Christ is already in heaven.” Recite to me, Christ, the New Testament: make me blessed out of your law. Recite it, so that you may know that you are not cheated of Christ’s presence. Hear him who is to judge: “When you did it to one of the least of mine, you did it to me.” Each of you is waiting to receive Christ seated in heaven: look at him lying under the colonnade; look at him hungry; look at him suffering cold; look at him needy; look at him a stranger. Do what you usually do; do what you do not usually do. The teaching grows; let good works grow. You praise the sowing; show the harvest. Amen.