Sermons to the People 253.1–254.8

The Gospel of Saint John the apostle, which is called “according to John,” was finished today, in what it tells of how the Lord appeared to his disciples after the resurrection. He addressed the apostle Peter, that presumer and denier, when he spoke to him now alive, death overcome, and said: “Simon son of John” (for so Peter was called), “do you love me?” He answered what was in his heart. If Peter answered what he had in his heart, why did the Lord ask, who saw the heart? Finally Peter himself too wondered, and with a certain weariness heard him asking whom he knew to be knowing. Once it was said: “Do you love me?” The answer was: “I love you, Lord; you know.” And again: “Do you love me?” “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.” And a third time, “Do you love me?” Peter was grieved. Why are you grieved, Peter, that you answer love three times? Have you forgotten your threefold fear? Let the Lord question you: it is a physician who questions you; what he asks belongs to your health. Do not be wearied. Wait, let the number of love be filled up, so that it may blot out the number of denial.

Yet everywhere, everywhere, that is, in the very threefold number of his questioning, the Lord Jesus entrusts his lambs to the one who answers with love, and says, “Feed my lambs, feed my sheep,” as if he were saying: What do you repay me, since you love me? Show your love in my sheep. What do you give me by loving me, when it was I who gave you to love me? But you have where to show your love toward me, you have where to exercise it: feed my lambs. How the Lord’s lambs were to be fed, sheep bought at so great a price, with how great love they were to be fed, he showed in what follows. For after Peter, the lawful number of a threefold answer being filled, professed himself a lover of the Lord, and his sheep had been entrusted to him, he hears of his future passion. Here the Lord showed that his sheep are to be loved by those to whom he entrusts them in such a way that they are ready to die for them. So the same John says in his Letter: “As Christ laid down his life for us, so we too ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.”

Peter, then, had answered the Lord out of a certain proud presumption when he had said to him, “I will lay down my life for you.” He had not yet received the strength to fulfill his promise. Now, so that he can do it, he is filled with charity. That is why it is said to him, “Do you love me?” And he answers, “I love you,” because only charity fulfills this. What then, Peter? When you denied, what did you fear? All that you feared was this: to die. He whom you saw dead is speaking with you alive: do not fear death any more; in him the death you feared was overcome. He hung on the cross, he was fixed with nails, he gave up the spirit, he was struck with a lance, he was laid in the tomb. This is what you feared when you denied; you feared to suffer this; and by fearing death you denied life. Understand now: when you feared to die, then you died. For he died by denying, but he rose by weeping. What does he then say to him? “Follow me,” knowing his ripeness. For if you remember, or rather since those who have read it remember, let those who do not remember be reminded, or those who have not read it learn. Peter had said: “I will follow you wherever you go.” And the Lord to him: “You cannot follow me now; but you will follow afterward.” “Now,” he says, “you cannot: you promise, but I see your strength. I examine the pulse of the heart, and I tell the sick man what is true. You cannot follow me now.” But this report of the physician is not despair: he added, and said, “But you will follow afterward.” You will be well, and you will follow me. Now, since he sees what is happening in his heart, and sees what gift of love he has given to his soul, he says to him: “Follow me.” I certainly said, “You cannot now”; now I say, “Follow me.”

But a certain question has arisen which must not be passed over. When the Lord had said to Peter, “Follow me,” Peter looked back at the disciple whom Jesus loved, that is, at John himself, who wrote this Gospel, and said to the Lord: “Lord, what about him? I know that you love him: how is it that I follow, and he does not?” The Lord said: “So I want him to remain until I come: you follow me.” The evangelist himself, the very one who wrote it, about whom this was said, “So I want him to remain until I come,” added his own words in the Gospel and said that a report had arisen among the brothers because of this word, that that disciple was not going to die. And to remove this opinion he added: “But he did not say that he would not die, but only said, So I want him to remain until I come: you follow me.” This opinion, then, by which John was thought not to be going to die, John himself removed by his following words, and so that it should not be believed, he says: “The Lord did not say this, but he said this.” But why he said that, John did not explain; he left it for us to knock at, in case it is opened to us.

As far as the Lord deigns to grant me, as far as it seems to me (and better men see it better), I think this question can be solved in two ways: the Lord said what he said either about Peter’s passion or about John’s Gospel. As for the passion, it would mean: “Follow me, suffer for me, suffer what I suffer.” For Christ was crucified, and Peter too was crucified. He experienced the nails, he experienced tortures. But John experienced none of them. That is, “So I want him to remain: let him sleep without a wound, without torture, and wait for me. You follow me, suffer what I suffer: I shed my blood for you, shed yours for me.” In this one way, then, what was said can be explained: “So I want him to remain until I come: you follow me”; I do not want him to suffer, you suffer. But according to John’s Gospel, it seems to me to be understood thus: Peter wrote about the Lord, and others wrote too; but their writing is occupied more with the Lord’s humanity. For the Lord Christ is both God and man. What is man? Soul and flesh. What then is Christ? Word, soul, and flesh. But what kind of soul? For cattle too have souls. Word, rational soul, and flesh: this whole is Christ. But about the divinity of Christ there is something in the letters of Peter; in John’s Gospel, though, it stands out greatly. “In the beginning was the Word,” he said. He went beyond the clouds, and went beyond the stars, went beyond the angels, went beyond every creature, and reached the Word, through whom all things were made. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him.” Who sees this, who thinks it, who receives it worthily, who utters it worthily? It will be well understood when Christ comes. “So I want him to remain until I come.” I have explained it as I could: he can do it better in your hearts.

So it stands, my brothers, so stands the misery of our condition and the mercy of God, that the time of sadness goes before the time of gladness: that is, that first comes the time of sadness, afterward the time of gladness; first the time of labor, afterward of rest; first the time of calamity, afterward of happiness. So stands the misery of our condition, as we have said, and the divine mercy. For the time of sadness, labor, and misery our sins have brought forth for us; but the time of gladness, rest, and happiness does not come from our merits but from the grace of the Savior. We deserve one thing, we hope for another: we deserve evils, we hope for good things. This is the work of the mercy of him who created us.

But in the time of our misery, and, as Scripture says, in the days of our birth, we ought to know where sadness itself should come from. For sadness is like dung. Dung put where it does not belong is filth. Dung put where it does not belong makes a house unclean; put in its place, it makes a field fertile. See the place for dung provided by the farmer. The Apostle says: “And who is there to gladden me, but the one who is saddened by me?” And in another place: “Sadness according to God,” he says, “works repentance unto salvation not to be repented of.” Whoever is sad according to God is sad over his sins unto repentance. Sadness over iniquity gives birth to one’s own righteousness. First let what you are displease you, so that you can be what you are not. “Sadness,” he says, “that is according to God works repentance unto salvation not to be repented of.” “Repentance,” he says, “unto salvation.” What salvation? “Not to be repented of.” What is “not to be repented of”? One which you can never repent of at all. For we have had a life we ought to have repented of: we have had a life to be repented of. But we cannot come to a life not to be repented of except through repentance of a bad life. Brothers, as I had begun to say, will you find dung in a cleaned heap of wheat? Yet to that brightness, to that appearance and beauty, one comes through dung: the filthiness was the way to the beautiful thing.

Rightly too the Lord says in the Gospel about a certain unfruitful tree: “See, it is now three years that I come to it, and I find no fruit on it: I will cut it down, so that it does not encumber my field.” The farmer intercedes: he intercedes when the axe is already hanging over the unfruitful roots and almost striking; the farmer intercedes, as Moses interceded with God; the farmer intercedes and says: “Lord, leave it this year too; I will dig around it and apply a basket of dung: if it bears fruit, good; if not, you will cut it down.” This tree is the human race. The Lord visited this tree in the time of the patriarchs, as in the first year. He visited it in the time of the Law and the Prophets, as in the second year. See, in the Gospel the third year has dawned. Now it ought, as it were, to have been cut down; but the merciful one pleads with the merciful. For he who wished to show himself merciful set up an intercessor against himself. “Let it be left,” he says, “this year too; let a trench be dug around it”: it is a sign of humility; “let a basket of dung be applied, in case it gives fruit.” Indeed, because it gives fruit in part and in part does not give fruit, its Lord will come and divide it. What is “divide it”? Because there are good and there are bad; but now they are set in one assembly, as in one body.

So, my brothers, as I said, dung in a suitable place gives fruit, but in an unsuitable place makes the place unclean. Someone or other is sad; I found someone or other sad: I see dung, I look for the place. Tell me, friend, why are you sad? “I have lost money,” he says. Unclean place, no fruit. Let him hear the Apostle: “The sadness of the world works death.” Not only no fruit, but great ruin too. So also with the other things that belong to worldly joys, which it would take long to list. I see another saddened, groaning, weeping: I see a lot of dung, and there I look for the place. And when I saw him sad and weeping, I looked more closely and saw him praying too. Praying, he gave me some sign of something good; but I still look for the place. For what if this man, praying, groaning, with great weeping, is asking for the death of his enemy? Even if he is already lamenting this way, already asking, already praying: unclean place, no fruit. What we find in the Scriptures is more: if he asks that his enemy die, he falls into the curse of Judas: “Let his prayer become sin.” I looked again at another, groaning, weeping, praying: I recognize dung, I look for the place. I paid attention to his prayer and I hear him saying: “I said: Lord, have mercy on me; heal my soul, for I have sinned against you.” He is groaning over sin: I recognize the field, I wait for the fruit. Thanks be to God: the dung is in a good place; it is not idle there; it brings forth fruit. This truly is the time of fruitful sadness: that we should grieve over the condition of our mortality, the abundance of temptations, the stealthy approaches of sins, the oppositions of desires, the quarrels of the lusts always in tumult against good thoughts: let us be sad over this.

This time of our misery and our groaning is signified by those forty days before Easter; but the time of gladness which will come later, of rest, happiness, eternal life, the kingdom without end, which does not yet exist, is signified by these fifty days, on which praises are said to God. For two times are signified to us: one before the Lord’s resurrection, the other after the Lord’s resurrection; one in which we are, the other in which we hope we shall be. The time of mourning, which the days of Lent signify, we both signify and have; but the time of gladness and rest and the kingdom, which these days signify, we signify by Alleluia, but we do not yet have the praises. But now we sigh toward Alleluia. What is Alleluia? Praise God. But we do not yet have the praises: in the Church God’s praises are repeated often after the resurrection, because we shall have perpetual praise after our resurrection. The Lord’s passion signifies our time, in which we now weep. The scourges, chains, insults, spittle, crown of thorns, wine mixed with gall, vinegar on a sponge, mockeries, reproaches, and finally the cross itself, the sacred members hanging on the wood: what do they signify to us but the time we are passing, the time of mourning, the time of mortality, the time of temptation? So it is a foul time; but let this foulness be the foulness of dung in the field, not in the house. Let the mourning be over sins, not over cheated desires. A foul time; but if we use it well, a faithful time. What smells worse than a manured field? The field was more beautiful before it had the basket of dung; the field was brought to foulness so that it might come to abundance. So the foulness of this time is a sign; but let this foulness be for us a time of fertility. Let us see, then, with the prophet what he says: “We saw him.” What was he like? “Having no form or comeliness.” Why? Ask another prophet: “They have numbered all my bones.” The bones of the one hanging were numbered. A foul appearance, the appearance of one crucified; but this foulness gives birth to beauty. What beauty? That of the resurrection. For he is “fairer in form than the sons of men.”

Let us praise the Lord, then, brothers, because we hold his faithful promises; we have not yet received them. Do you think it little that we hold him as promiser, so that we may now claim him as debtor? God the promiser has become a debtor by his own goodness, not by our advance payment. What have we given him, that we should hold him as debtor? Perhaps what you heard in the Psalm: “What shall I repay to the Lord?” First, when he says, “What shall I repay to the Lord?” the words are those of one who will owe, not of one who claims a debt. Something has been paid out to him in advance: “What shall I repay to the Lord?” What is “What shall I repay”? Pay back. For what? “For all the things he has repaid to me.” What has he repaid to me? First I was nothing, and he made me; I had perished, he sought me; seeking, he found me; captive, he redeemed me; bought, he set me free; from a slave he made me a brother. “What shall I repay to the Lord?” You have nothing to repay. When you expect everything from him, what do you have to repay? But wait: he wants to say something. Why does he ask, “What shall I repay to the Lord for all the things he has repaid to me?” Looking around on every side for what to repay, he seems to have found something. What did he find? “I will take the cup of salvation.” You were thinking of repaying, and you are still seeking to receive. See, I beg you. If you still seek to receive, you will still be a debtor; when will you be a repayer? If, then, you will always be a debtor, when will you repay? You do not find anything to repay: you will have nothing except what he has given.

See: when you were saying, “What shall I repay?” what you said belongs to this: “Every man is a liar.” For whoever wants to say that he will repay something to God is a liar (all things are to be hoped for from him; from ourselves apart from him nothing except perhaps sin), and he speaks a lie from his own. Truly man abounds fully from his own: he has here a lie altogether, and a treasury of lies. Let his heart lie as much as it can, it does not run short; let him invent whatever he can, let him lie whatever he can. Why? Because what he has for nothing he has from himself; he did not buy it. When it comes to the truth, if he wants to be truthful, it will not be from his own. Peter was a liar from his own. Where was he a liar? The Lord foretold his passion to us, and Peter says: “Far be it from you; let it not happen.” “Every man is a liar.” Why a liar? Hear the Lord himself: “You do not savor the things of God, but the things of men.” But Peter was truthful: when? “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Where did this truth come to a lying man? See, a man says: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Who says it? Peter. What was Peter? A man, who spoke the truth. Certainly, “every man is a liar.” See, see his tongue; see the tongue from his tongue: how is “every man a liar”? Hear: “every man is a liar,” because of his own. So from where was Peter truthful? Hear the Truth itself: “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona.” Blessed from where? From his own? Far from it! “For flesh and blood has not revealed it to you, but my Father who is in heaven.”

Let us praise the Lord, then, dearly beloved, let us praise God, let us say Alleluia. Let us signify in these days the day without end; let us signify the place of immortality, the time of immortality; let us hasten to the eternal home. “Blessed are those who dwell in your house; they will praise you for ages of ages.” The Law says it, Scripture says it, the Truth says it. We are going to come to the house of God, which is in heaven. There we shall not praise God for fifty days but, as it is written, for ages of ages. We shall see, we shall love, we shall praise. Neither will what we see fail, nor will what we love perish, nor will what we praise fall silent; all will be everlasting, it will be without end. Let us praise, let us praise; but not with voices alone, let us praise with our conduct too: let the tongue praise, let the life praise; but let it have infinite charity. Turning to the Lord, etc.